tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34265250521489776352024-03-13T21:41:14.250-07:00The Substance of Things Hoped ForReclaiming the Catholic ImaginationFr. Denis Robinson, OSBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16278806962010025145noreply@blogger.comBlogger406125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3426525052148977635.post-46349644012753462442022-04-26T20:04:00.004-07:002022-04-26T20:04:51.732-07:00Rector's Conference<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIh5m52iYUhBY0HTVA644X5H4PpTDosm6ubuh5WwCWOTD0jliYjkTvKfkhiFXtduR8-TlqfClcES0JNhqo0p7Xd8qfZ2FyZ42uKn9JIOQyo7kupSGMZlV85jxX2Joil-QDMFNmprii0g2VF8mOrpQP5OdPtZwNJdsN18dvQb7OxMpMBwpoV9RIMIXGvA/s936/Picture1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="528" data-original-width="936" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIh5m52iYUhBY0HTVA644X5H4PpTDosm6ubuh5WwCWOTD0jliYjkTvKfkhiFXtduR8-TlqfClcES0JNhqo0p7Xd8qfZ2FyZ42uKn9JIOQyo7kupSGMZlV85jxX2Joil-QDMFNmprii0g2VF8mOrpQP5OdPtZwNJdsN18dvQb7OxMpMBwpoV9RIMIXGvA/w400-h226/Picture1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Rector’s Conference</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">April 24, 2022<br />Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Last week, I was particularly taken with the homily of Deacon Thayer in which he quoted Pope Francis:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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." </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">For example … </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We need to be a part of the whole and not individuals tilting our little boats toward an elusive salvation. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">As Pope Francis might say, we think of ourselves and not of others and we become less than human by that turn. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">All these issues are problems of imagination. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We cannot imagine a world in which the poor and the needy are brought into communion with the ever-present others.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We cannot imagine a world in which truth is triumphant </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I close tonight with the words of the Little Flower:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p>Fr. Denis Robinson, OSBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16278806962010025145noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3426525052148977635.post-22070236633707926032022-04-26T20:02:00.004-07:002022-04-26T20:05:22.777-07:00Second Sunday of Easter<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiMBoPt-QXnv17Pa-8paqydTLhMEUsgq0VI1V3g_iQW3rIbGBI64kJWAsNYRpZXyMKeyrUTIkhsvXOlh_gqiQqI8NUFNF4xx-VeTjkdu36KDO5oLAjIQI3cb5TmAPnYcbPzoA1ZGBBF2rplb9fULLKevjKNakLVhyYhXBKn8uxIUaEdhzbYE1Xrau8mw/s828/Picture1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="599" data-original-width="828" height="289" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiMBoPt-QXnv17Pa-8paqydTLhMEUsgq0VI1V3g_iQW3rIbGBI64kJWAsNYRpZXyMKeyrUTIkhsvXOlh_gqiQqI8NUFNF4xx-VeTjkdu36KDO5oLAjIQI3cb5TmAPnYcbPzoA1ZGBBF2rplb9fULLKevjKNakLVhyYhXBKn8uxIUaEdhzbYE1Xrau8mw/w400-h289/Picture1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Second Sunday of Easter</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">April 24, 2022<br />Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Easter always makes me feel rather nostalgic because Easter is a nostalgic time, remembering childhood egg hunts and little seersucker suits.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Remembering going to Church on sunny days, it always seemed to have been sunny.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Remembering that fake shiny Easter basket grass that was undoubtedly carcinogenic </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Remembering the spiral cut ham which you never realized why it was important that it was spiral cut. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Remembering PAAS dyed eggs whose uncertain color rubbed off on your hands and clothes</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Remembering the Easter egg hidden and not found until July. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Remembering lamb cake, that delectable confection of chocolate cake and white icing shaped like a lamb.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">And little girls’ bonnets, and chocolate rabbits and Reese’s Peanut butter eggs</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">And yet … despite all of this sun-drenched joy there is a certain somberness in today’s Gospel. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Thomas the doubter was a human person, prone to human responses and human reactions. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">That was two thousand years ago. Now back to now. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">In the words we speak, words of peace, words of hope, words of love. That’s what Easter is.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">In the presence of the children in all of us, anticipating, dreaming, generously desiring seeking that elusive egg in the grass.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">In the sacrament we celebrate in full anticipation of being fed, of seeing our deepest dreams come true. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">And this brothers and sisters, is Divine Mercy, </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">You know how it is. Like the Lord, sometimes the pope can’t catch a break. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The Name of God is Mercy. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We want to believe the worst about people. We want to revel in their problems and failures. How else would politicians thrive?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We want to hear about the peccadillos of others, the falls from grace, the absolute need for proof. How else would gossip find fuel?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We ardently desire to know the bad, to hope for a little failure. How else would tragedies like the war in Ukraine exist?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Somehow the dismal makes us feel better about ourselves.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Jesus says: Open the wounds. Let the world see the failure. Here are my hands and feet, believe.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">That is mercy.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">God presents himself to us as he did to Thomas. That is mercy</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">God holds himself out for us to touch. That is mercy.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">God leaps into the pure depravity of the human condition. That is mercy. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">God insinuates himself into bread and wine to nourish us. That is mercy. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">God lays down with the crippled soul of humanity. That is mercy.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">God allows his faultless flesh to be nailed to a cross. That is mercy.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">God hides in the earth for three days to accustom himself further to our condition. That is mercy. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">And then he rises from the dead and destroys death and its awful stench in us.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">That is mercy. That is pure mercy, nothing but mercy. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Mercy pours out from the Divine Seat.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It pours out like rays of light streaming from the heart of Christ.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It pours out on a world so unaccustomed to Good News that it finds it incredulous</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It pours out like fresh water, the water of baptism on a people choking on the sands of a self-generated desert</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It pours out like light of Elendil to illumine the dark place of our world and our souls.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It pours out like a rushing wind that wipes away the smoke of war, of terror,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It pours out on you and on me. We receive his mercy.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Like a soccer ball to the face, his mercy hurtles toward us.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Like a heap of fake grass, his mercy covers us. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">But here is the question of the pope: Can we also become vessels of that mercy?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Thomas became a great evangelist of the love and mercy of God, through his doubt. Can it be so with us? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p>Fr. Denis Robinson, OSBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16278806962010025145noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3426525052148977635.post-91970761355728938442022-04-26T19:58:00.003-07:002022-04-26T19:58:32.766-07:00Easter Tuesday<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVfOjMdBvy2ExvxGmExx4dH5_JOkHLm7RsNDykjXBk_wwUbCBOlTLeIYmJkVMzSKawImyWlkcSGwRnzv00qhA-EGCZVcm4Jsq4lZSr5il-tF6uQ86KW9LANRtUqCJ0PkSRFxAggw51rggcNopsW6JBy8dxDKaRodwOwzXEJ8xLk0ROaF34Ww56PWJ88g/s768/Easter.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="768" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVfOjMdBvy2ExvxGmExx4dH5_JOkHLm7RsNDykjXBk_wwUbCBOlTLeIYmJkVMzSKawImyWlkcSGwRnzv00qhA-EGCZVcm4Jsq4lZSr5il-tF6uQ86KW9LANRtUqCJ0PkSRFxAggw51rggcNopsW6JBy8dxDKaRodwOwzXEJ8xLk0ROaF34Ww56PWJ88g/w400-h266/Easter.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Easter Tuesday</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">April 19, 2022<br />Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">St. Thomas Aquinas Chapel</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">“I’m Harman Duckdown” the man replied, “I’m the usher here.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">“What’s going on”” Mr. Taylor Steggs innocently asked.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">He continued, confidently chewing on a piece of straw. “Some of these people are going to be baptized.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">He went on: “Some others will get their first communion, they will get the Blessed Sacrament for the first time.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Mr. Taylor Steggs had no idea what a Blessed Sacrament was. Now he couldn’t help but ask. “What is a Blessed Sacrament?”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Mr. Duckdown pondered this question for a minute, churning the piece of straw around and around in his mouth.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Finally, he responded: “I don’t rightly know, again, it’s a mystery.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">“Don’t you belong to this place?” Mr. Taylor Steggs innocently asked.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">“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?”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">“Of course it is.” </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p>Fr. Denis Robinson, OSBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16278806962010025145noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3426525052148977635.post-13795574718087263992022-03-12T06:27:00.002-08:002022-03-12T06:27:47.141-08:00Priesthood Promises<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhIo2uNAyKjPG-iFnkr9wFg77beUquq0F9QqYE6yaBj7RHgonj_g0RQe58O4dTJKGdM189BjlMef1Xi0ta8Fw74lgqqLd-Pji29AtnMY0dKiv5NjaOmSslsdkXRzrCvOnCiucCUpL2glfc0OAYKb0puhA64UaRDm1Cq-XcF1hRI1oL8zNWFNQzaDKShXw=s976" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="399" data-original-width="976" height="262" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhIo2uNAyKjPG-iFnkr9wFg77beUquq0F9QqYE6yaBj7RHgonj_g0RQe58O4dTJKGdM189BjlMef1Xi0ta8Fw74lgqqLd-Pji29AtnMY0dKiv5NjaOmSslsdkXRzrCvOnCiucCUpL2glfc0OAYKb0puhA64UaRDm1Cq-XcF1hRI1oL8zNWFNQzaDKShXw=w640-h262" width="640" /></a></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Priesthood Promises</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">March 10, 2022<br />Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">A Great Cloud of Witnesses</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We have here a great cloud of witnesses</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">A great cloud of witnesses</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">A great cloud of witnesses</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">A cloud of witnesses</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">A cloud of witnesses</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Peter and Paul form also a chorus, that great cloud of witnesses.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Oh, my brothers and sisters, these are a great cloud of witnesses</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">But I wonder, I wonder if the only witnesses needed are already gathered in this room, the Church militant, our simple selves? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">That is a great cloud of witnesses</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">A great cloud of witnesses</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p>Fr. Denis Robinson, OSBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16278806962010025145noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3426525052148977635.post-7441710043084317692022-03-03T14:11:00.003-08:002022-03-03T14:11:22.893-08:00Ash Wednesday<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEij4kN3azvvGGc8aIGl8z3DPVGK90btfohibXgXX6p4pYeVN2Lb2PA9inkKzEIx4AGiNM2x_jH7p5FGsMzotHyIKrDFIzkML1eCjMlk0fy9hnT01hnJGzb71hF2IWiRBJTLuWkykV2gi_kjWX0A0htfVvgeRQcnoaVxyoY1blAUWRN6kL5mahyEPpHEBA=s768" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="659" data-original-width="768" height="344" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEij4kN3azvvGGc8aIGl8z3DPVGK90btfohibXgXX6p4pYeVN2Lb2PA9inkKzEIx4AGiNM2x_jH7p5FGsMzotHyIKrDFIzkML1eCjMlk0fy9hnT01hnJGzb71hF2IWiRBJTLuWkykV2gi_kjWX0A0htfVvgeRQcnoaVxyoY1blAUWRN6kL5mahyEPpHEBA=w400-h344" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Ash Wednesday</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">March 2, 2022<br />Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Seek and you will find the Gospel tells us. How can we do that?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Seek the Lord and in that search find ways to make yourself that greater man or that greater woman.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Here is what I say:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It doesn’t matter if I have had trouble in school.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It doesn’t matter if I wore thick glasses at a ridiculously young age.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It doesn’t matter if I was slow and ridiculed</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It doesn’t matter if I was a nerd and ridiculed</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It doesn’t matter if I was too smart and ridiculed</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It doesn’t matter if I struggle with porn</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It doesn’t matter if I struggle with the bottle</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It doesn’t matter if I struggle with sexual identity</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">What matters is that I struggle and never give up.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">But first …</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">There is letting go and there is re-grasping because:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">What can we do?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Give something:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Your comments in class today were really good.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Your witness in the chapel is very positive.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Your little homily in the house meeting really meant something to me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">During this Lent, find a way to let your light shine, because I know it is there.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Just not yet …</span></p>Fr. Denis Robinson, OSBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16278806962010025145noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3426525052148977635.post-51135967325105273162022-03-02T08:15:00.004-08:002022-03-02T08:15:38.340-08:00Ash Wednesday Rector's Conference<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEif1Xn18ei2oWmIsS61G41GUaNRDDc9C8zr5S3xM1ejM752-RMdEHvfL6hrMW26CSpX2w_QhOEiUgThFcJZm7tUfupKrtqG9B6T1RO0bI7cR9fnTffJ8atHi96ojR3yxhF4ShlFlrAklz3q45ptXU-M-5HKVOLID7B-8i9QfQ4YgKg3__Gnx-by-bodMA=s1280" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEif1Xn18ei2oWmIsS61G41GUaNRDDc9C8zr5S3xM1ejM752-RMdEHvfL6hrMW26CSpX2w_QhOEiUgThFcJZm7tUfupKrtqG9B6T1RO0bI7cR9fnTffJ8atHi96ojR3yxhF4ShlFlrAklz3q45ptXU-M-5HKVOLID7B-8i9QfQ4YgKg3__Gnx-by-bodMA=w640-h360" width="640" /></a></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Ash Wednesday Rector's Conference</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">March 2, 2022<br />Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Preparing for Lent</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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…</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Again, St. Therese:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">When I die, I will send down a shower of roses from the heavens, I will spend my heaven by doing good on earth.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p>Fr. Denis Robinson, OSBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16278806962010025145noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3426525052148977635.post-41069846003924470802022-02-26T14:15:00.006-08:002022-02-26T14:15:54.485-08:00Deacon Promises<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgygl6cf7eq7SWAEpPaCN2x3WrpVHtzC1p2pk-S7Qngl-PCKmlR4Dstg1zs3aAJ9ClL8JnUH0nnY60Q2kYql7nxKgjHi8DihO1mHMhdWDj9uyzrEZc3t5EhSELVcUN37R5U__zlE0YfJxzSFNcfHiAdS_NOlrIszUkZ3-McUZ6bjItIB5w3FBbHhxKfWA=s580" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="385" data-original-width="580" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgygl6cf7eq7SWAEpPaCN2x3WrpVHtzC1p2pk-S7Qngl-PCKmlR4Dstg1zs3aAJ9ClL8JnUH0nnY60Q2kYql7nxKgjHi8DihO1mHMhdWDj9uyzrEZc3t5EhSELVcUN37R5U__zlE0YfJxzSFNcfHiAdS_NOlrIszUkZ3-McUZ6bjItIB5w3FBbHhxKfWA=s16000" /></a></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Deacon Promises</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">February 24, 2022<br />Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">This you have been called to do, so you may receive a blessing as your inheritance.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">My brothers and sisters, our gathering this evening speaks volumes about the ideal of vocation. What are we called to do?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">So often I think we neglect that true humanity or we believe that it has no purposeful role in our beautifully imagined vocation. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Our humanity is seldom a part of our well-rehearsed scenario of perfection, and let’s be honest, our humanity is messy.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Our past is compromised, compromised by the inadequacies of our parent and our own failures, our sins, our neglect of self</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">This you have been called to do, so you may receive a blessing as your inheritance.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Jesus doesn’t operate a CarMax.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Jesus runs the kind of used car lot that has a bunch of junkers. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">This one gets going fine but then just decides to stop running halfway to the hospital.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">This one is a Pinto that looks great in the front, but blows up if you hit it in the rear.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">This one has a leaky window.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">This one has windshield wipers that only work if it isn’t raining.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Junk, weirdos, problems. Mistakes? I think not. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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 …</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">You too are preparing to run a soteriological used car lot. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">You will have a few shiny models, some really dependable models that will be there every time the Church’s garage doors open. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">This you have been called to do, so you may receive a blessing as your inheritance.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">When you think about the used car lots that will be your parishes over the next 50 years …</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Here you will find old beat up models, and some that are shiny on the outside but rusty on the inside. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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 … </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Tonight your promises are a new lease on life because guess what, you are old junkers too</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">You are broken by your sins</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">But God will make you shine again</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Your internal combustion engine always seems to need attention</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">But God will make you run and not grow weary</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">You are up on blocks and headed for the junk yard</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">But God will make you YOU, because he will make you like himself</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">This you have been called to do, so you may receive a blessing as your inheritance.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Tonight God is standing by to perfect your promises.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I love a used car and I love you. </span></p>Fr. Denis Robinson, OSBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16278806962010025145noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3426525052148977635.post-82226516448665604282022-02-14T13:59:00.005-08:002022-02-14T13:59:38.919-08:00St. Scholastica<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhWCkc6ei6OYgNF7iqGL8NhVIihwTs4jBi0hqntu1SyKlZZbNDCkCeS3xyBXZsDEGh1DFkxahA42FgMJmlZ0WTfYoiGHGT02XVJNkB9pdRWbDmnvMmWYQS6lqssCepxvgVXQTtyzT0ldn8ncVPcTo3wiixiHDI3kbRwhzZVXSR7FRH8aocv6T6-0HQNmg=s1150" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="904" data-original-width="1150" height="315" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhWCkc6ei6OYgNF7iqGL8NhVIihwTs4jBi0hqntu1SyKlZZbNDCkCeS3xyBXZsDEGh1DFkxahA42FgMJmlZ0WTfYoiGHGT02XVJNkB9pdRWbDmnvMmWYQS6lqssCepxvgVXQTtyzT0ldn8ncVPcTo3wiixiHDI3kbRwhzZVXSR7FRH8aocv6T6-0HQNmg=w400-h315" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;">St. Scholastica</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br />February 10, 2022<br />Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">“Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Scraps, crumbs, leftovers. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The summer snow storm created joy in my grandmother’s neighborhood every year, but the real entertainment came from the pickers.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">“Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">“Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I wonder brothers and sisters, are we willing to trudge the roads in search of treasure caught up in the wind?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">There may not be much reward in it, but it must be satisfying because it is our salvation. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Crumbs, scraps, leftovers. Us.</span></p>Fr. Denis Robinson, OSBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16278806962010025145noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3426525052148977635.post-67859448419912890562022-02-14T13:00:00.000-08:002022-02-14T13:00:20.667-08:00Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg0u4jrWH6LPeBsyrJhkNVVGesuj1_nW6JbyF_DEHqEdIeltK71sAyf1zTS8T6CH2QyXHR08-Jbl4TdM-iV7I-z8m0vCVZ-TcVczXqnXlycd4sftDsTteT0zOH9R6SY4-sJtupptytW5bbzKdRnuyw-aCm63zNKeC-OOms14ainm231rV7RyObkGqZCMw=s748" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="552" data-original-width="748" height="295" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg0u4jrWH6LPeBsyrJhkNVVGesuj1_nW6JbyF_DEHqEdIeltK71sAyf1zTS8T6CH2QyXHR08-Jbl4TdM-iV7I-z8m0vCVZ-TcVczXqnXlycd4sftDsTteT0zOH9R6SY4-sJtupptytW5bbzKdRnuyw-aCm63zNKeC-OOms14ainm231rV7RyObkGqZCMw=w400-h295" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">February 13, 2022<br />Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Blessed are the … </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">But they are meaningful, or at least we say they are. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">For these they are encouraging. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">They may be discouraging to the hypersensitive soul just beginning the purgatorial ramble in this life. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The truth of the matter is this: We want to be good but we somehow continually, struggle and fail.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">And it is our fault of course. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Undoubtedly my sage mother is right and we might see similar instances of Jesus’ concern today:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">If the internet is offensive to you, who logged on? If you drink too much, who opened the bottle?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">If you eat too much, who bought the case of Velveeta shells and cheese at Sam’s?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">If you are offended by the program on Netflix, who paid for the subscription?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">And yet in the midst of all of these concerns, we must also find the beauty, that fertile field of hope and joy.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Perhaps we need a few of St. Luke’s woes to guide us to a more fertile field</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">All of it true However, Jesus message is clear: There is also something blessed in this world, something that can lead us somewhere.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Or in bread and wine?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Take and eat, Take and drink …</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Do this in memory of me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Don’t blame the Cheetos if our fingers turn orange.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">True words, but why not enjoy the Cheetos as well.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Undoubtedly there is room for judgement in our lives but … </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p>Fr. Denis Robinson, OSBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16278806962010025145noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3426525052148977635.post-52729329539340799752022-02-02T05:02:00.001-08:002022-02-02T05:02:02.794-08:00Feast of the Presentation - Candlemas<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgG64RJHIayvKS9MZ-DJTAoQTF14jC-swIt4Vsu-aPkar1Yf0z4kz-NJFzcbZWvjCz1AwKcFCl6zsFeoL1q9CmTsURQSg-Sd_KKYJHHK1_e8qblvYJK6ewb-1lkMj93AE_igV6_35EPd9vxN0nh9aTMu77WgB1e3CR0LoNXUxc5nTkZv7fFF2wacZF14Q=s516" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="388" data-original-width="516" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgG64RJHIayvKS9MZ-DJTAoQTF14jC-swIt4Vsu-aPkar1Yf0z4kz-NJFzcbZWvjCz1AwKcFCl6zsFeoL1q9CmTsURQSg-Sd_KKYJHHK1_e8qblvYJK6ewb-1lkMj93AE_igV6_35EPd9vxN0nh9aTMu77WgB1e3CR0LoNXUxc5nTkZv7fFF2wacZF14Q=s16000" /></a></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Feast of the Presentation - Candlemas</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">February 2, 2022<br />Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">There is a wonderful quote by the American literary critic, Barbara Johnson. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">"Faith is seeing light with your heart when all your eyes see is darkness."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">How appropriate for our feast today. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">When we look at our ancestors in faith, their eyes saw only darkness. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">"Faith is seeing light with your heart when all your eyes see is darkness."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">They felt their ways along the walls of its precincts, its wailing walls hoping to pick up some gossip, some shred of good news.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Mary the mother clutching a candle that she prayed the futile traversals of the temple’s stampeding worshippers would not extinguish.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Joseph, the shield, the protector</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">And the ever conscious baby, did he know that all of this activity was ultimately about him?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">"Faith is seeing light with your heart when all your eyes see is darkness."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Passed along to tax collectors lost in the morass of their ill begotten greed.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Given to political pot boilers and doubters and traitors</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It made its way into the halls of power, into house churches, into basilicas, monasteries, humble homes.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It burned its way through the pages of history, a history of ravaging wind that might have stifled it but for its divine temperament. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It burned its way over the fields of folly cultivated even in our day with the plowshares of men’s ignorance</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It burned and it eradicated bigotry, racism, sexism and all the other isms that plague the human heart.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It burned and lightened lives controlled by the horrific darkness of addiction.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It burned and touched the molting draperies of turmoil, sending their shards flying aimlessly in the air.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It burned down the corridors of culture and comes to us today.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It passes its brilliance over lives shut off from the hermeneutic of salvation. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">"Faith is seeing light with your heart when all your eyes see is darkness."</span></p>Fr. Denis Robinson, OSBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16278806962010025145noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3426525052148977635.post-44976547803208417522022-02-01T12:48:00.001-08:002022-02-01T12:48:02.774-08:00Opening Day - Spring Term 2022<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgDQnOqS6jzbQZban-98gdtvTimPAtnODlPEsLNKSwD1WiyMdk0Nx_IMLUUpgQ1Or-26IYXk3VfyREHFumGUifS-EDjd9Zt1q2Bi34O7Ys_34EdU6n1zVBtc4upGqimthLPheljDZ0enLq2VbL-VHS7Oz18FXQtsXFA5-7hilWSg36E8Oiw5J73jMd7kw=s936" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="522" data-original-width="936" height="357" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgDQnOqS6jzbQZban-98gdtvTimPAtnODlPEsLNKSwD1WiyMdk0Nx_IMLUUpgQ1Or-26IYXk3VfyREHFumGUifS-EDjd9Zt1q2Bi34O7Ys_34EdU6n1zVBtc4upGqimthLPheljDZ0enLq2VbL-VHS7Oz18FXQtsXFA5-7hilWSg36E8Oiw5J73jMd7kw=w640-h357" width="640" /></a></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Opening Day</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">January 31, 2022<br />Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">He asked him, “What is your name?”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">He replied, “Legion is my name. There are many of us.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Whitfield was, and is, the shorthand name for Mississippi’s most famous, perhaps infamous, public mental health hospital. It was also shorthand for the state of a person’s mind, hence: Mister, you’re going to end up in Whitfield, or you need to be sent to Whitfield. It is a threat very well known to Mr. Taylor Steggs and even though Whitfield was in the southern part of the state and, therefore, beyond Mr. Taylor Stegg’s sphere of influence it was, nevertheless a potent threat. He heard it all the time in Rushing’s drug store, the old men, listening to a particular theological opinion of Mr. Taylor Steggs would cry: Why Mr. Taylor Steggs you’re going to end up in Whitfield if you keep going on like that. One time, even his Uncle Taylor Steggs threatened to send him to Whitfield if he didn’t modify a particular exegetical quandary concerning the Book of Revelation.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">In general, Mr. Taylor Steggs was fearless. He really didn’t care what people thought about him and his preaching, no preacher really could. But the threat of Whitfield, its locked doors and straight jackets frightened him beyond measure. Most of this had to do with Jasper Legion Puckett. A little-known point of Mississippi jurisprudence is that every small town was required to have two things; one, a pair of spinster sisters. Oxford had the Cook sisters, Nancy and Tootsie who lived on Main Street near Mr. Taylor Steggs’ grandmother, Mrs. Taylor Steggs. They were wonderful. They always smelled like Vicks VapoRub and apple pie filling and fed every child in the neighborhood. The other requirement of Mississippi towns was not quite as warm and cozy. It was the law that every town in the Magnolia State must have a town lunatic. If they didn’t have one of their own, they were required to import one from a town that had two. Such was not the problem for Oxford however as they had their own and a prize he was, Jasper Legion Puckett. Nothing on earth struck terror in the heart of Mr. Taylor Steggs more than Jasper Legion Puckett. Such had been the case his entire life. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">No one really knew how old Jasper was. He seemed to have been around Oxford for as long as anyone could remember. It is thought he wandered into town one day from Yalobusha County and never left. It was rumored he lived in a drainage ditch south of the Piggly Wiggly. He was often seen around town, or near the graveyard or even on campus. He yelled at people, poked at people, cried out at people. He was always dressed the same, with a battered old seersucker suit, a crooked clip-on bow tie and some beat-up saddle oxfords. His pants were too short and his jacket was too loose, hanging on his wiry frame like a dumpy potato sack. He would often show up around churches on Sunday or near the Abbey restaurant. He got around and he was famous and Mr. Taylor Steggs avoided him like the plague. Because, Mr. Taylor Steggs was afraid of crazy.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">For years, this game of cat and mouse went on. In his ministry, Mr. Taylor Steggs had encountered and knew on a personal basis, almost every last citizen of Oxford except for Jasper Legion Puckett. Undoubtedly one day his number would be up and Mr. Taylor Steggs faced the prospect stoically. It happened seemingly by accident on a frost January day when Mr. Taylor Steggs had been evangelizing at the barber shop. He was having very little success and frankly, he as a bit down in the mouth about it. Bowing his head he made his slow way home, cutting through the alleyway right between the drugstore and the undertaker. About halfway through the alley, Mr. Taylor Steggs felt a kind of chill come over him, and then from some dark recess of the brick walls he heard a somber voice. “Crazy is as crazy does” the voice solemnly intoned, echoing off the walls of the drug store and rebounding off the walls of the undertaker. Mr. Taylor Steggs froze in his place, at first not seeing the source of the voice but fearing, at some level, its gravity. “Crazy is as crazy does” the voice repeated and Mr. Taylor Steggs spun around to see Jasper Legion Puckett standing in a crook in the wall nibbling on his fingernails as he casually assessed Mr. Taylor Steggs up and down.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">“What did you say to me?” Mr. Taylor Steggs queried.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">“I said crazy is as crazy does, you little jackass.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">In all his seven long years, no one, even his worst enemy, had spoken in such a rude tone to him. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">“I’m sorry, sir, do I know you?” Mr. Taylor Steggs asked. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">“Well, you’ve been avoiding me your whole life.” The shadowy voice countered. “Is that knowing?” The man spoke with quiet eloquence, and, manners really, hardly like a maniac at all not that Mr. Taylor Steggs had extensive acquaintance with the species. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Stepping out into the light a bit Mr. Taylor Steggs had a better look at the town lunatic. His ill-fitting seersucker suit reminded Mr. Taylor Steggs of someone, but he could not think who to save his life (and his life might need saving in very short order). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">“Why have you avoided me, Mr. Taylor Steggs?” the odd-mannered man asked.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">“I have not been avoiding you?” Mr. Taylor Steggs countered somewhat hesitantly.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">“Oh yes you have” Jasper Legion Pucket replied. “And the reason is that you know very well that I am the devil, just like you.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">All of this was too much and Mr. Taylor Steggs felt as though he might faint. The alley temperatured up somehow oppressively hot even though it was wintry January. Though the gloom Mr. Taylor Steggs could see the stark face of Jasper Legion Puckett leering at him, standing in front of a poster with dancing pigs on it: “Three Pigs BBQ Sauce: Pour your way to porky happiness”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Suddenly Jasper Legion Puckett began to laugh a demure laugh, a refined laugh. “I’m just like you” he repeated. “We both want the same thing, souls Mr. Taylor Steggs, souls. I do believe however that I want them somewhat more than you do. I really do. Do you want souls Mr. Taylor Steggs? What are you willing to give for them? What will you sacrifice I wonder? Your suit? Your shoes? Your bow tie? Your hat?”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Mr. Taylor Steggs was shaken to the core of his existence and so he did what any seven-year-old evangelist would do. He screwed up his eyes and shouted in a loud voice, “Get behind me Satan” and he stood stark still. When he opened his eyes, Jasper Legion Puckett was just looking at him, his face so reminiscent of the faces of the dancing pigs. And he laughed in a high-pitched voice, a devily voice. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">“Oh Mr. Taylor Steggs, the things you don’t understand are legion” and with that parting salvo, he walked away. Mr. Taylor Steggs never saw him again, some say he ended up in Whitfield, and some folks claimed that he had never really even existed, but Mr. Taylor Steggs knew without a doubt in his heart that this was decidedly untrue. He had seen Legion and it was him.</span></p>Fr. Denis Robinson, OSBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16278806962010025145noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3426525052148977635.post-46776830523544374632021-10-05T12:52:00.004-07:002021-10-05T12:52:30.799-07:00St. Therese of the Child Jesus<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYN3fMuMM6v_tZT4LSzd5UeTTEZPAJctbN4SHmHT1tg_hVNZ-eTPc2ePSsItGKP7ye6wN5npnaOGf_O_O9sZ0SuRfSofY-bDMXn_i9HQeccT6h4t1xxNx6uIIDfFEbZMA0DB3ac1t5Cph1/s798/Caravaggio_-_The_Incredulity_of_Saint_Thomas.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="588" data-original-width="798" height="472" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYN3fMuMM6v_tZT4LSzd5UeTTEZPAJctbN4SHmHT1tg_hVNZ-eTPc2ePSsItGKP7ye6wN5npnaOGf_O_O9sZ0SuRfSofY-bDMXn_i9HQeccT6h4t1xxNx6uIIDfFEbZMA0DB3ac1t5Cph1/w640-h472/Caravaggio_-_The_Incredulity_of_Saint_Thomas.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;">St. Therese of the Child Jesus</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">October 1, 2021<br />Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">My brothers and sisters, there can be very little doubt that some are in and some are out. Jesus has been traipsing around the Holy Land, picking up people, 72 of recent vintage and seemingly, picking up grudges as well. Jesus’ bad mood today is hard on the cities of Judah. For nine chapters he has preached. For nine chapters he has performed miracles. For nine chapters he has transfigured himself and tried to let people know some Good News, but their ears are blocked. Even Capernaum, home to his buddy Peter and Peter’s delightful mother-in-law gets the cold hard stare of Jesus’ disdain. Sodom was better off than Bethsaida, Tyre and Sidon, those swamps of Gentiles, better off than Galilee. It’s a common trope in Luke’s Gospel. The Jews are on the downturn, the Gentiles, including the 72 have set their faces with Jesus to go to Jerusalem. It’s all over now but the shouting, the shouting and 10 more long chapters in the Gospel. Some are in and some, well, are out in the New Covenant. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Some are in and some are out. How do we deal those cards here? There is no doubt that we put people in categories. This group, this one is too, I don’t know what. These folks don’t think like me, act like me, talk like me, so they must be wrong. Woe to you first philosophers. Woe to you deacons. Woe to you overseers. Well, perhaps we are overreacting. Woe is strong, but the message of the Gospel is strong as well. That message is a hard message, and it is a cleansing message and there is no doubt that this community, like all communities needs to be cleansed. This familiar town may need to clean its act up, wash out its mouth a little bit, straighten its act up. Only a pastor can say that. Only a father who loves you can say that, but every town, every seminary, every parish, every diocese could equally hear that message. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We are living in chorizon. We are inhabitants of Bethsaida. Capernaum is our home, but these fragile locations are also a place of call. When Jesus called those 72, the people of the Way became, muddled, mingled, multiform. Folks began to traipse around with Jesus that looked foreign, they spoke crazy languages, they had strange beliefs. They were aliens but unliked the 9-chapter Jews, they heard the Word and they put down their lives and they followed that crazed Word wherever he wanted to lead them. They might have been from Tyre and Sidon, even from Sodom, but they were strangers and aliens no longer, they were Christians, men and women of Christ and by extension children of the most high God. They were out but now they are in.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">What about those who are here? Are we in or are we out. What about those who show up day by day in our every-damning lists of who is acceptable and who is not. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We think we are in but we might be out.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We think we are smart but we might be dumb</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We think we are dumb but we might be quite intelligent</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We think we are important but we might be lowly</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We think we are nothing in the eyes of this community, but we might be something beautiful</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We think we are hot but we might be not</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We think we are cool, but we might just be lukewarm</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We think we are saved but we might be damned</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We think we are damned, but I would be willing to bet that we are saved. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">In fact, I know it is true that the last shall be first and the first shall be last. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Brothers and sisters, Jesus is calling us out of Tyre and Sidon, and out of Corazon and Bethsaida,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The almighty God is calling us to pitch our tents closer and closer to the River Jordan</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The God of thunder is calling us to be his own inheritance.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The God of plenty is calling us to dig in</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The God of love is calling us put aside our judging and put away our self-importance and fall in love with Him again today. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Sinners to saved</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Sinners to saved </span></p>Fr. Denis Robinson, OSBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16278806962010025145noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3426525052148977635.post-48368717836007645242021-09-16T12:34:00.000-07:002021-09-16T12:34:03.296-07:00Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKzm98VB8j7vMOvSaxktnnNC7yW_swlvO6oqdehLSjd7mFNMOcc8xPEthX4458lC2q7nAAO9Vw1HJNqoM6q7Eymd_FvTm_iLIcgRfmpX-yBeXn0giGZQaaqe_VmFFcpXMqT5D5N9ozJG39/s429/Picture1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="429" data-original-width="343" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKzm98VB8j7vMOvSaxktnnNC7yW_swlvO6oqdehLSjd7mFNMOcc8xPEthX4458lC2q7nAAO9Vw1HJNqoM6q7Eymd_FvTm_iLIcgRfmpX-yBeXn0giGZQaaqe_VmFFcpXMqT5D5N9ozJG39/w320-h400/Picture1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">September 14, 2021<br />Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">He emptied himself,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">taking the form of a slave,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">coming in human likeness</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I wonder what it must have been like for God, the God of ages and more than ages, the God of creation and beyond creation, the God of time and no time. I wonder what it must have been like for God the all-knowing, the all-powerful, the all-present, to come down to earth and take our form. True enough, he created that form, but that wonder he had called forth from the dirt of the earth had itself become dirty. He came in the likeness of human persons. The tiny baby of Bethlehem, compromised by the filth of the human condition. The radiance of God, dimmed by concession and shame. What did he take on, our lowliness, our abjectness, our destiny, the destiny of death? He did, indeed.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">He emptied himself,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">taking the form of a slave,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">coming in human likeness</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Found human in appearance,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">he humbled himself,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Becoming obedient to death,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">even death on a cross.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">His human likeness mirrors us, ever since the fall we have struggled to walk. Ever since the tower, we have tried to construct our way into dignity. Ever since the Law, we have clamored against the Law. Our lives in this world had resolved themselves into chaos. Even now, even after he emptied himself, we know that chaos, the cries of lost innocence, the pleas for life in places like Kabul or Chicago, the sinister whisper of danger that greets us often, even every morning as we rise from the comfort of our pillows. When he humbled himself, it was no symbolic subjection. We were grimy. We were lost. We were stupid and the taint of that awfulness continues into the corners of our lives like faint mists suddenly rising up over the morning’s still breath. It is the steam, the stench, the stigma of death, symbolized so powerfully for us by the intersection of two pieces of wood. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Because of this, God greatly exalted him</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">And yet: There is another story here, the continuation of shame has become the cause of exaltation. The symbol of death has become the tree of life. In the sacrifice of Jesus, our exile becomes home. We were doomed in the Fall to wander the earth, in the exaltation of the cross, we are privileged to wander the earth in the evangelization of peoples. God’s plan in the cross pays off in the ransom of souls. God’s plan in the cross, exalts the head crowned once with thorns but now with immortality. God’s plan in the cross is that the serpent raised in the wilderness of Sinai should become the sign of life to those formerly soaked in venom. Jesus is that exaltation. Jesus is that piercing cry of hope. Jesus is our only hope of being cured of the death we ourselves brought into this world.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Because of this, God greatly exalted him</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">that at the name of Jesus</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">every knee should bend,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">to the glory of God the Father</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">What is there left for us to do but worship? Our worship is our response to that kenosis, that emptying. That is Good News for us. That is all our hope, all our promise that in so loving the world, God gave us the only precious thing he had, his Son. The trouble in the world has become the blessing of the world and we proclaim it, we confess it. Jesus Christ is Lord. That is our rallying cry in a world so compromised. That is the cry of this community as we war against the temptations that surround the sons and daughters of God. That is the cry we exude from our hearts, our minds, our skins as we glory in the cross of Christ. Brothers and sisters, we are a people saved by God and that reality must surely bring us to our knees. God has given his broken body for us in this Eucharist, the exaltation of the cross is the rising of his body above the sepulcher of this altar. Every tongue must now confess it: Jesus Christ is Lord. </span></p>Fr. Denis Robinson, OSBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16278806962010025145noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3426525052148977635.post-79810713220750446022021-09-16T12:31:00.005-07:002021-09-16T12:32:31.422-07:0024th Sunday in Ordinary Time<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHM4Hy78gvqNjD4cHL9px5lDkQArKmCWJJTecup4FOqyJ8CWjGiLD8cSur7wSzsGacWo7ar_Q6ItVyd0pETNSI9TMLPG9glogt3vMw3dIRB66G7MSANRlDhXXG0zKWDFfpbuDlr2xeN2tB/s733/Picture1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="733" data-original-width="540" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHM4Hy78gvqNjD4cHL9px5lDkQArKmCWJJTecup4FOqyJ8CWjGiLD8cSur7wSzsGacWo7ar_Q6ItVyd0pETNSI9TMLPG9glogt3vMw3dIRB66G7MSANRlDhXXG0zKWDFfpbuDlr2xeN2tB/w295-h400/Picture1.jpg" width="295" /></a></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;">24th Sunday in Ordinary Time</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">September 12, 2021<br />Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">St. Peter is in a pickle. Perhaps that is not unusual, it seems that Peter is always at least flirting around the briny lip of the pickle jar. The first pope has all of the answers of course. You are the Christ. No futzing about with Elijah, Moses or the Prophets. It is straight and simple. You, Jesus are the anointed one, the One sent by God to save not only Israel, but the wretched Gentiles as well. You are HIM and I, Peter, recognize you as such. But there is more to the story. Peter is also the impetuous one, the one who tries getting out of the boat, getting into the boat, walking on water, bumbling around with the other disciples. His profession of faith is profound, but just seconds later, the Rock has become the stumbling block, Satan. His proclamation of the reality of Jesus is on target, but it won’t be long </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We know that in the future Peter will deny the Lord three times in the heat of the passion, a denial that will cause him bitter regret.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We know that that denial will come with the inquisition of a slave girl. We know that the rooster’s crow must have signaled the initiation of Peter’s being haunted every morning for the rest of his life. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Peter is in a pickle because of his inconstancy, his lack of resolve, his cowardice.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We know that Peter’s confession at the end of Saint John’s Gospel, his reconciliation likewise is not without compromise. We are told Peter’s feelings were hurt because Jesus asked him a third time if he loved him, a question that seemed apropos to the man who denied he even knew his Lord. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Peter was a messy person. He was a braggart. He was a stumbler. He was an ear chopper. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Peter was and is in a pickle. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">And you know what? That’s fine because we are in a pickle quite a bit of the time too.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We’re in a pickle</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Peter presided and presides over a messy Church, a sometimes braggart Church, an often weak Church.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We wish that we could express the pristine quality of the Church, a perfect institution without compromise to its fabric, without stain to its reputation.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">But truly we live in a Church often smeared with controversy, with scandal; financial scandals, sexual scandals, power scandals. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We hope that the future of our Church, a future that lies certainly in the hands of the Lord, but also uncertainly in human hands, our hands, will find a more sacred path, a more sanctified way through the world, will be for others what it truly must be, a beacon of hope in an ever-darkening landscape, the landscape of the human condition.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">But really we know that we are also full of sour, pickley contradictions, each of us, in our lives we know that tension, that compromise of Peter that hears one minute the call of Jesus and in the next puts conditions on accepting that call, conditions of our own reckoning, our own construction. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We aspire to heights of achievement, to academic success, spiritual success, pastoral success, we want to be good, and true, and kind, we really do.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">But actually we find ourselves forever visited by ghosts who haunt the back rooms of our lives, ghosts with names like doubt, despair, indifference, the PAST.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">And we might give in, we might give up, we might give over until, unless we realize in one shocking moment of insight and revelation that this is the faith we celebrate.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It is messy faith, a faith impinged with the barbs of imperfection, like little shells in the scrambled eggs.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It is a human faith, divine certainly but also very human, built upon the faulty towers of our dreams and hopes, hopes and dreams that sometimes line up like soldiers on the divine battleground, but sometimes falter because they are the dreams and hopes that we wish to see, like Peter, rather than the hopes of Christ, the dreams of the savior. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Ours is a faith infused with the quality of divinity but parading itself across the meadows of this world in borrowed uniforms, glad rags.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Who are you? Who am I?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We are flawed, but striving for perfection</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We are exhausted but searching for rejuvenation </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We are mediocre but always aspiring to that arête, that excellence which stands at the heart of the Church’s mission, a mission founded on the confession of Saint Peter, a mission renewed daily in this chapel, renewed today for people in a pickle.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We are in a pickle</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">But, back to Peter for a moment. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Peter is also called. The pickled one is called and that, brothers and sisters is very good news. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Peter went on </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Peter went on to move past his sin and move past his doubt and move past his weakness</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Peter was called, called to the wonder of that Upper Room where a stymied and heartsick group of men and women mourned and lamented the decimation of their hope, the loss of their beloved on the cruel hill of Calvary, but Peter was called with them to hear that wondrous news, bourn by breathless women: He is alive. He is risen.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">And Peter was called, called to that same Upper Room, on the day of Pentecost, called to open his mouth to receive the mighty wind of the Holy Spirit, to speak boldly in tongues to people longing to hear Good News, longing to hear sound doctrine, longing to hear the infallible voice uttering from the mouth of a flawed fisherman.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">And Peter was called, called to proclaim the news of Jesus, the crucified one, the risen one, called to proclaim Him to the four corners of the world, called to be that messenger, that evangelist of the Truth.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">And Peter was called, my brothers and sisters, to lay down his life in the Circus of Nero, on another hill, called Vaticanus, and from his tomb, from his very body the Church’s heart continues to beat today. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Peter was called. He is called</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">And so, are we. We are called, we pickled people. We are called.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We are hoping, loving, giving, desiring, fulfilling AND stumbling, faltering, cowering, but always called in Christ.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">This is the faith of our mothers and fathers, those men and women who conquered bravely in the eschatological battle</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">This is the faith of that countless multitude of saints; unsung, unnamed that have gone before us living lives of fortitude, of strength in the Gospel of Jesus, proclaimed by Peter, proclaimed in a pickle.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">This is the faith of sinners and cowards who yearn for better lives, better days, more holiness, more gratitude.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">This is the faith of seminarians, teachers, students, doubters, wonderers, lovers, who know their weakness and their failures and are able to build upon the rock of those weaknesses and failures a solid understanding not only of who they are but who they must become to serve the weak, the fallowness of those yet-unseen vineyards that will comprise their fertile, evangelical fields.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Brothers and sisters, we are drawn here to this hill to celebrate the faith of Peter, not in observance alone but in participation, to push ourselves, to challenge ourselves to greater heights of love, greater breadth of service, greater depth of learning.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Drawn here to this place to understand what God has in store for each of us, a plan that outshines the feeble offerings of a world inundated in self-loathing that masquerades as self-love.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Drawn here to appreciate that the entirety of our lives, our futures, for generations to come depends upon our ability to answer a call that emanates today from this chapel, from this altar upon which is presented that Sacrament we worship and adore.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It is the cry of those oppressed for justice.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It is the sigh of those lying in the rubble of the twin towers of bigotry and evil conceit. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It is the plea of those deprived for life.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It is the appeal of those in need, those suffering, those multitudes of which we are of their number, who yearn for dignity, for bread, for hope.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Drawn here and standing on the promises of God, my brothers and sisters we pray with Peter:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Lord I believe, help my unbelief. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Brothers and sisters, Peter was the rock, but we are also the rock; Peter was the firm foundation upon which the hope of the world is built, the hope of our lives is constructed. And we are also that firm foundation, resting today on the confidence we have in this place, Peter was in a pickle, so are we, but therein lies the very core of faith. Flawed but saved and that is a sure hope. </span></p>Fr. Denis Robinson, OSBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16278806962010025145noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3426525052148977635.post-81601751662994897632021-09-16T12:28:00.003-07:002021-09-16T12:28:29.145-07:00Memorial of St. Gregory the Great<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQmslW7ecOwp8hHu2kLMePIH2rC03qKuahKNwaukP6x4vEzXV5H5t733vgwSBENxbd-pDG2yBo4EdcwJSQm-daWSbPYeVNJlnN-A-AdOcJ0v8-k7APIhyKQmdUyUCEOQEho3SwF5ShRrAK/s936/Picture1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="506" data-original-width="936" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQmslW7ecOwp8hHu2kLMePIH2rC03qKuahKNwaukP6x4vEzXV5H5t733vgwSBENxbd-pDG2yBo4EdcwJSQm-daWSbPYeVNJlnN-A-AdOcJ0v8-k7APIhyKQmdUyUCEOQEho3SwF5ShRrAK/w400-h216/Picture1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;">St. Gregory the Great</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">September 3, 2021<br />Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The fifth chapter of St. Luke’s Gospel comes halfway through what might be termed, Jesus farewell tour of Palestine. Well, frankly, it’s also his inaugural tour of Palestine.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Jesus was baptized by John and he hits the road. He has a message to share and, at least he knows, there is precious little time to share it.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">He tries to take his Good News to the Jews, tries to convince them of the Truth of what he is preaching but the wine of discipleship is too new for their old skins. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Their wine is rich and nuanced, but it is overwhelmed with the tannins of the Law, it has become too mute through too frequent decantations. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">St. Luke’s great dilemma in the Gospel is placing Jesus at the intersection of old and new wine, the ancient message of Israel and the new message, often catered by Gentile sommeliers. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The old wine of Judaism, at least in Luke’s appreciation, might well be so old that it is starting to sour, the old skins into which it has been poured, too diffuse and unrecognizable to be carriers of the heady stuff of heaven. There is no doubt that Judaism, for Luke is careening on the descent and a new wine is rising into its power. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Jesus is inviting a new viticulture. He is making a turn.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The nouveu bojoulais is in the house. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">There is new wine to be had</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">New wine, dripping with the intoxicating aroma of promise where there was only ever disappointment.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">New wine, steeling itself against the spiritual palate which longs to taste the headiness of wonder and awe</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">New wine, tangy on the tongue with notes of surprise, notes like love, patience, compassion, kindness and generosity. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">New wine that sparks the recklessness of threatened intoxication with the subtlety of ironic Godhead.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">New wine that is transformed into his blood as the disciples recline in the upper room.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">New wine, living wine that flows from his bruised brow on the hill of shame, on Calvary. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Brothers and sisters what about us?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Intoxication and wreckless discipleship are the order of the day. Are we willing to be new skins?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Take it in, breath it in. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Jesus the vintner is coming to us new this day. He is opening his heady stores for us. He is promising something so new that we can scarce imagine it.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Will we let him in?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Will we split the skins of our hearts to be bathed in this new wine?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I know we will. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The old is passing away, and behold I make all things new.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Come with joy into the presence of the Lord. The journey continues. </span></p>Fr. Denis Robinson, OSBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16278806962010025145noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3426525052148977635.post-69159460569306670482021-09-16T12:25:00.007-07:002021-09-16T12:25:57.399-07:00Feast of St. Bartholomew<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaoDY3awBWadXmwdPAQWU_wAzurkF9Y8Qnm9JRqX_Av9GB-IVHgpFL_XL3TUgiwaMLZCrF21Nr9UFKUrqRPvpYf0fWAXNSP0iwD9XRqAi3dfaivrXJ0MsQ6zugz_fUZvVnKpGn3rkSsMux/s1250/Picture1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1250" data-original-width="630" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaoDY3awBWadXmwdPAQWU_wAzurkF9Y8Qnm9JRqX_Av9GB-IVHgpFL_XL3TUgiwaMLZCrF21Nr9UFKUrqRPvpYf0fWAXNSP0iwD9XRqAi3dfaivrXJ0MsQ6zugz_fUZvVnKpGn3rkSsMux/w201-h400/Picture1.jpg" width="201" /></a></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Feast of St. Bartholomew</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">August 24, 2021<br />Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The Gospel today is a little tricky in that there is something unnerving about celebrating the Feast of St. Bartholomew and everything in the Gospel is about some fellow called Nathanial. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It’s all about Nathaniel sitting under a fig tree</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It’s all about the prediction of Jesus that he (Nathaniel) would see angels ascending and descending, which presumably is better than being known for sitting under a fig tree. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It’s all about Nathaniel, but today is the feast of St. Bartholomew</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">What do we know? Who knows? And ultimately what does it matter.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">As is often the case with lesser-known apostles, Bartholomew had a colorful afterlife, missionary work in India and martyrdom by flaying. His iconography, including the wonderful image on the wall of the Sistine Chapel, includes him showing of his flayed skin in heaven.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">You can visit him today in the Church of St. Bartholomew on the Isola Tiburtina on the former site of the temple of the Asclepian cult. If that doesn’t please you, it is possible to visit him in several other places as well. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Do we know all of these things? We do and we don’t.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">What do we need to know? We NEED to know this. Bartholomew was one of the Lord’s chosen. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Like the others, he left everything and followed Jesus until the end.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">That is us, is it not? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Do we need recognition? Do we need to be well-known for everything we do? This is probably the wrong calling for those who do. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Do we need our name in celestial lights? We might spend a lot of time trying to erect a billboard, but chances are our electricity will be cut off before we get to light the thing up. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"> Or are we content with obscurity. Are we happy with just being the little workers who use our skills and our pastoral oil cans to keep the great machine of discipleship in motion? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Do we need for others to know what we do? I don’t think so, in fact I hope not. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We are Bartholomew. Let us rejoice in that. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Anonymous but faithful. </span></p>Fr. Denis Robinson, OSBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16278806962010025145noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3426525052148977635.post-30128248469005093642021-09-16T12:23:00.005-07:002021-09-16T12:23:59.033-07:00Opening Day & Blessing of the Faculty<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh63gxIqqwvGSaa547EgGErZh1fcPkuyORbdNEg5yMQenXFrUToL0tVj7Xp5Mdd6ifh573t2VZxLzh95f7He_ZDjfJUwAafa5lUBXV_4vFC8_GDQx3E5f1B-i4zTWL4273n3oMDMM6XwJoM/s936/Picture1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="692" data-original-width="936" height="296" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh63gxIqqwvGSaa547EgGErZh1fcPkuyORbdNEg5yMQenXFrUToL0tVj7Xp5Mdd6ifh573t2VZxLzh95f7He_ZDjfJUwAafa5lUBXV_4vFC8_GDQx3E5f1B-i4zTWL4273n3oMDMM6XwJoM/w400-h296/Picture1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Opening Day & Blessing of the Faculty</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">August 30, 2021<br />Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">“My grace is sufficient for you,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">for power is made perfect in weakness.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I will rather boast most gladly of my weaknesses,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">in order that the power of Christ may dwell with me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Therefore, I am content with weaknesses, insults,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">hardships, persecutions, and constraints,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">for the sake of Christ;</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">for when I am weak, then I am strong.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">These lines from St. Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians have perplexed preachers and commentators, really since the time they were composed. Perhaps that is the nature of Sacred Scripture, in fact, I am sure it is.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">There can be little doubt that the task of the priest, the pastor, is to offer clues to his congregation, that flock of Christ placed so precipitously in his care, to offer clues to the sheep as to how they are to be as the flock of Christ. Perhaps that is a question of particular importance at this juncture in Christian history. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Power is made perfect in weakness</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It would seem that power is needed on the part of Church leaders today in ways that have seldom been seen in the history of the Church. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It seems to me that our Church, perhaps particularly in this country still continues to reel from the effects of the abuse crisis. Like a punch drunk boxer we still climb up into the ring, only to be mowed down again, often in totally unanticipated ways. This allegation emerges just as the last one seems to be put to rest. Lessons are not learned and we cry out, with those affected by abuse, we cry out against perpetrators that, at times, still seem to be protected by powers unseen. If we are scandalized, what must the effect be for our people? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Today, it sometimes seems, we are living in a leadership crisis. Our leaders, our priests and bishops, are called to one thing and that is to preach the Gospel through the Mass, in the Sacraments and with their lives. We who are ordained, must preach the Gospel completely without compromise, but sometimes I witness in the Church, and I know you witness it as well, a tepidness, a timid nature. Are we ashamed of the Gospel of Christ or do we have so little confidence in the folks we serve that we believe they cannot hear this Gospel without blanching as did the hearers of Jesus in John’s Gospel?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Do we fear that they will run away if we place too much of a burden on their shoulders? Brothers and sisters, I would argue that the opposite is true. If we leaders proclaim a milky, watery Christian faith, what do our folks, what do WE, have to follow? Jesus did not proclaim a leadership of mediocrity but a robust and lively faith that consumes the whole of each person that takes it up, that weakens their sinful spirits and enlivens them, us, with the power of Christ made perfect in weakness.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">To me there can be little doubt we are in the middle of a cultural crisis. The post-modern sensibility which we have strongly embraced in this culture whether we know it or not, is a culture of death. Any so-called culture that is built on the principles of the variability of Truth is a false culture. Culture teaches us who we are. Do we know who we are? Culture instructs us about the values of God. Do we embrace the values of God? Culture teaches us respect for one another. I believe very firmly that respect is vanishing around us by the day. Our culture no longer knows how to tell the Truth because it firmly holds there is no such thing as the Truth. Libertarianism leads to one place, anarchy. Our task, in Christ, is to proclaim the Truth of culture and to make sure that every person in our sphere, that is, every person on earth is loved and respected, upheld and affirmed.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">When I observe our country in the throes of response to the Great Virus, I know we are also in the middle of a social crisis. What has happened to neighbors and communities? Our social order is weakening because, again, we are relying on our own sense of so-called “freedom” in order to make critical decisions. Whatever happened to self-sacrifice? Are we no longer women and men who serve God, country, one another, we are fast becoming women and men who serve only ourselves? It seems to me that true patriotism has become a lost value. How tragic is that? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I would say that many of these crises, arising in our world today, and in our Church today, are products of a breakdown of family life. Here I do not mean to imply just a breakdown of traditional views of the nuclear family, that is certainly a part of it, but rather a breakdown of a sense of need for family, of being a part of something. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I am thinking here about the Jewish custom of the Friday night meal service, the Shabbat. Traditionally minded Jewish families gather each Friday evening for a ritual meal in the home. These “families” are certainly made up of biological parents and children, sometimes several generations, but it also is the opportunity to invite into the “family” those who have no one, single people, widows, those who are estranged and alone, and those who doubt. All of these are an essential, in some ways the essential part of our family. Fr. Guerric mentioned this so beautifully this weekend, and much more eloquently than I can. I ask though: How many people have we written off? How many no longer measure up to our standards, but are perfectly acceptable to God’s standards. Power is made perfect in weakness. These are the weak, brothers and sisters, and we likewise are the weak. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">All of these, all of them simultaneously, you will be called to address in your lives as priests. All of these we are called to serve in our lives as witnesses to the Gospel, every one of us in this room tonight. Those lonely, those sad, they are pastoral challenges, but first, they are personal opportunities. All of us have at some time or another been controlled by negative ideals. All of us at one time or another, even every day, every moment of the day must cast ourselves on the mercy seat of Christ.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Power is made perfect in weakness</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">What are the challenges you bring to the table?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Weakness? Do you know weakness? Of course you do, and that self-knowledge calls us to be compassionate, to join our suffering with the suffering of the ever-present other around us. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Insults? Have we experienced insults? I hope we have. I know we have. Certainly the world does not often understand our compulsion to love Christ above all things, but I also know the secret judgement that is doled out here every single day against one another. I also know the insults we hurl at ourselves on a regular basis, the belief that lies about ourselves, told too often, by ourselves are true. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Hardships? Is this seminary a hardship for you? In some ways it should be, we should be challenged in many ways by what happens here. And we, as a faculty and staff must challenge you. We are not called to be babysitters, we are called to form young men for service in the Church, a vocation that requires your maturity and your total commitment to the task. Life is sometimes hard here, perhaps especially in the past year, but it is through those hardships and through those challenges that we grow. It is through the rugged terrain of formation that we rise to the highest realms of discipleship. It is interesting to me that many of our faithful lay people often understand this better than the priests who are called by God to give them their example. Sometimes I wonder, in fact I know, that the lay faithful can put us to shame in their fidelity to the Gospel. Perhaps that kind of a realization is also a hardship to us.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Persecutions? Have we known persecutions? If not, you will. So often, as priests, people talk about us, criticize us, even slander us. I know that the slanderous words they spread can often be a way of deflecting attention from their own shoddy actions and attitudes. If a person, a fellow priest, even a bishop wants to lie about you to protect his or her own skin, so be it. Turn the other cheek. If you are doing your job, and proclaiming the message of Christ, and loving people to the best of your ability, then onward you must go. We cannot be hampered in our evangelical call by gossips, sinners, naysayers who threaten us with words that cannot harm us in the least. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Constraints? Brothers and sisters, we who are championing Christ and the message of the Gospel cannot be constrained. If we are constrained then we do not ultimately believe. Let us make a vow this year to be bolder and more prominent carriers of the Message of Jesus. Let us put aside all malice and discord to sing together in full harmony the words of Jesus. If this is a cause for weakness in us, if we have been broken down by the Gospel then, I believe, it is also the opportunity to be rebuilt. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">What are your goals this year? What are your priorities? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Listen again to the words of St. Paul:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Therefore, I am content with weaknesses, insults,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">hardships, persecutions, and constraints,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">for the sake of Christ;</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">for when I am weak, then I am strong.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Brothers and sisters we are called to conform ourselves to Christ</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We are called to conform ourselves to Christ as healer. We live in a broken world. We know what surrounds us, not only real illness but those metaphorical illnesses that are more plaguing than plague. Christ will heal us if we are also willing to be the source of that healing, our words, our consolation, our touch, our tenderness, our love. We heal and so are healed.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Let us also heed the call to follow the example of Christ as shepherd. All of us here are given some flock, even if it only the flock of our own lives. All of us here are called to offer a resounding voice across the hills of this world that proclaims that Jesus is Lord. All of us here are summoned by God for his purpose in the world, to offer his gifts, to offer his promise. Will we take up that mantle, with all our gifts and strengths but also in our weakness? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Our task is to evangelize the world and never rest until every man, woman and child has not only heard the message of the Gospel, but have been converted to Christ by virtue of the witness of our lives. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We are called and we boast in the love God has poured out on us pitiful creatures. My brothers and sisters, I am expecting a year of transformation and a year of conversion. We will have it, not because I will it but because God wills it. God wills it beyond every other thing in us, even in our weakness. </span></p>Fr. Denis Robinson, OSBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16278806962010025145noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3426525052148977635.post-27581500406901859632021-06-22T18:01:00.004-07:002021-06-22T18:01:30.001-07:00Saint Meinrad Summer Update<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg54FG_dvY4lQRowgxwNLnudRGfLx0Br21zL-A75SaIGZVCrZ9dQMfWKYj9t_3ysDSUF_SlWUQ-JgwP9mtRlE88jZaW1_11DjDkT0PRu5Nm9rfqSHiezNdjXLhQ5dRKRuDL26iPaxjnJkGL/s500/SMS.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="179" data-original-width="500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg54FG_dvY4lQRowgxwNLnudRGfLx0Br21zL-A75SaIGZVCrZ9dQMfWKYj9t_3ysDSUF_SlWUQ-JgwP9mtRlE88jZaW1_11DjDkT0PRu5Nm9rfqSHiezNdjXLhQ5dRKRuDL26iPaxjnJkGL/s16000/SMS.jpeg" /></a></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Summer Update</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">April 11, 2021<br /></span><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Dear Brothers and Sisters,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Greetings from Saint Meinrad. As the summer wears on, I wanted to take the opportunity to let you know a little of what is happening here in the School and what we are looking forward to in the coming weeks and months. In dioceses and communities across the country, our brothers are being ordained as deacons and priests. It is a joy to see in these men the fruition of so many long and sometimes difficult years of formation. It is a joy because it is an expression of God’s love, not only in their lives but in the life of the Church. While there can be no doubt that the Church today faces challenges, it does so with complete confidence that its future is assured in the holiness and zeal of these deacons and priests who join their brothers in a breathless desire to serve God and his people.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Here at Saint Meinrad, we are also moving forward, awakening and stretching after the long nap of COVID. This past week we hosted the first of the annual OBOC conferences. It was not only wonderful but a blessing to welcome these high school youth back to Saint Meinrad after our 2020 hiatus. In other areas as well, we are opening. Groups and individual guests are returning. People are roaming the grounds again. Saint Meinrad is “back in business” and it is wonderful to see how our guests love to be here and to be close to the holy ground that is our home.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Many of us on the staff have also been busy, not only attending ordinations but also engaging the Church in various ways in service to religious communities, dioceses and parishes. It has been good to be out again, seeing the Church come alive. This summer, we are working on a number of new initiatives for the fall, reworking the pastoral formation program, realigning the seminary retreat program, looking at our archabbey retreat program, and engaging a number of new liturgical initiatives, all of which will be communicated as they come to fruition in the coming weeks. Another area of expansion and growth is in our Center for Sacred Music, headed by Br. John Glasenapp. We are also looking at opportunities to grow our present outreach to youth and young adults. We are working on two massive grant applications to further these new works. Another project we are engaging is the Benedictine Arts project, looking at ways to expand our outreach to parishes in this critical area. Finally, in our deacon program we are searching for a new director, as our very successful director, Deacon Rick Wagner has moved on to the presidency of Guerin High School in the Diocese of Lafayette.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">For all of us connected to Saint Meinrad, whether as faculty, administration, monks, or students, we are finding new opportunities to serve the Church as we always have. This summer, I have been involved in several projects, two books which I hope will appear in the coming months, a revamping of our Board of Overseers meetings (more on that to come), as well as getting into some corners of the Church in the United States that I had not explored before. I am so happy that all of us are able to, as Theodore Roosevelt once said, “Get Action!” The Church is alive and well and needs all of us in our very particular and wonderful vocations more than ever. I will soon be departing on diocesan and student visits and I want each of you to know of my fervent daily prayers for all you are doing in YOUR corners of the Church.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Peace in Christ,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">FDR</span></p>Fr. Denis Robinson, OSBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16278806962010025145noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3426525052148977635.post-21462878478737057212021-04-14T21:38:00.003-07:002021-04-14T21:38:46.497-07:00Rector's Conference, 2020-2021 Formation Year<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg12bj4titqAihxoXJZ0AsJjkfTo8oC9uVOUPHK4pOO_96aiTAVIzbblSzTRXFHaKxaScS4G3LO03kuRKNAx7uKRknwlHoy9OwJzr0UhoFxrmp-HvgyRqzGdCZFPNV0F4N4-7-rEW0Yjy-/s292/thumbnail_image001.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="288" data-original-width="292" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg12bj4titqAihxoXJZ0AsJjkfTo8oC9uVOUPHK4pOO_96aiTAVIzbblSzTRXFHaKxaScS4G3LO03kuRKNAx7uKRknwlHoy9OwJzr0UhoFxrmp-HvgyRqzGdCZFPNV0F4N4-7-rEW0Yjy-/s0/thumbnail_image001.jpeg" /></a></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Rector’s Conference</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">April 11, 2021<br />Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">This evening, I would like to take a slightly different approach to the rector’s conference. As we embrace the Easter season, we have four weeks left in this formation year. I would like to spend some time this evening reflecting upon what we can expect over the next four weeks. Of course, we can expect the usual staff changes, the new list of seminarian appointments, the room lottery, eating, saying goodbye, dreading finals, papers to finish, negotiating in vain over papers being finished. We can expect all of the usual, but as we know this has not been a usual year. Before the break, I challenged all of us to consider the importance of vaccinations. I mentioned at that time that I saw vaccinations as the key to our return to more normal activity. I had in my mind as I made that announcement an expectation of what percent of the community would rise to that challenge. As you know, we have been affected by COVID here. In my recent visits to bishops and vocation directors I learned however, that our outbreak was significantly less than was the case in many other seminaries. We had 8 cases here, in addition to one staff member and one visitor who worked in our kitchen. Ten cases during the formation term, in the seminary, that is all. Others of you, I know contracted the virus while at home either before arriving here or during the winter break. I learned over the Easter break that many other seminaries had anywhere from 50 to 70 percent of the seminary infected. Our low numbers are a tribute to each of you, of your willingness to follow the crazy rules that we placed for you, but placed, I hope you can see, for your own health and well-being. Now back to our numbers. As of this week 97 percent of the community has been vaccinated. I can count on less than one hand the people who have chosen not to be vaccinated. When I saw that number, it moved me to a great sense of awe, I will admit. That awe was that each of you who have been vaccinated have made a sacrifice for the Church, to protect those you will serve in parishes and hospitals this summer. One student said to me. I didn’t do this for me, I did this for them. That is a Saint Meinrad spirit.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">As a man of my word, I will now announce the changes in practices for us in the coming days. Effective this coming Saturday, April 17 at 12:01 a.m.:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">1. We will return to service in one dining room. We will all be able to eat in Newman dining room, together, for the first time this year.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">2. We will not be required to wear masks, in the chapel, in the hallways or in the classroom, unless required by the professor. I say not required to wear masks. If you wish to wear a mask you may wear one.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">3. Seminarians can continue to attend Mass in the archabbey church on Saturday morning, but other services in the church will remain closed.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">4. We will allow for the distribution of communion on the tongue again in our chapel. For now we will not be returning to the sign of peace or communion under both species. I am asking for a review of these practices and for their reimplementation next semester.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">5. As you see the Holy Water has already returned with the Easter season.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">6. Faculty members and other staff members, having been vaccinated, may return to the chapel for prayer and Mass.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">7. Guests may now visit with vaccinations. Vocation directors and bishops are already scheduled for the coming days and weeks.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">8. You may go out for off-campus meals and shopping and for weekend home visits and excursions. I ask that when out you follow the mask rules imposed by the state or by individual businesses. You need not contact your deans for off-campus activities, unless you are leaving for the weekend, then the usual protocols apply.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">9. Regular business can return for Jacks. I am asking that for the remainder of the year, it only be students and resident staff at the UnStable, however.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">10. There may be some additional changes. I will ask Fr. Tobias to amplify some of the comments I have made. I will ask Fr. Julian to distribute directives for liturgy that are more complete than these cursory comments.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Many of our brothers here have never known a normal year at Saint Meinrad. I am praying that at least for a few weeks we can offer them something of that. A normal three weeks at Saint Meinrad. I like the sound of that. I am praying that next year we can return to implementing new programs and finding new ways to promote the work of formation. I am looking forward to this summer when One Bread, One Cup returns to Saint Meinrad and our graduate students return. Our programs in IPP will resume in earnest. Our retreats and continuing education programs will ramp up again. Mostly, however, I am anticipating with great joy looking at each of you face-to-face in times to come. I am so tired of masks. I hate masks. We are not by nature a masked people.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Once again, I thank you all from the bottom of my heart for the great work you have done this year. It has been a year that none of us will ever forget. As we begin to emerge, I can say this with no reservations: You are all heroes to me.</span></p>Fr. Denis Robinson, OSBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16278806962010025145noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3426525052148977635.post-24689391783328728972021-03-29T18:05:00.004-07:002021-03-29T18:05:55.253-07:00Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2DvMEwlJnzhtdrOxexc01IIie2hRVktW_J8JR_3v7U1L_nC13EEcv3fdgQw5t2lg2c14P6ZtL9tXVXx9Inulhl-mS0Z_7ceIPlKir2uqsgmhCvnOJVKjq5bKDOrmsK47_W3NeK85rkg4w/s1024/the-annunciation.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="807" data-original-width="1024" height="504" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2DvMEwlJnzhtdrOxexc01IIie2hRVktW_J8JR_3v7U1L_nC13EEcv3fdgQw5t2lg2c14P6ZtL9tXVXx9Inulhl-mS0Z_7ceIPlKir2uqsgmhCvnOJVKjq5bKDOrmsK47_W3NeK85rkg4w/w640-h504/the-annunciation.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">March 24, 2021<br />Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Covid quarantine does strange things to us. It changes us, or perhaps makes us more of who we really are.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Many of my accustomed habits for each day, getting up early, office reading at precisely, novel reading, everything to the ready, shower, shave, ear hair cut, teeth, meds, all strangely strangled by ironically having MORE time to do things.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">One of the really odd habits I have picked up during CQ is watching YouTube videos. I’m a bit addicted to them in fact. Is there such a thing as YA meeting? I don’t know, I’ll look it up on You Tube.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The videos I love are animal rescue videos.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">After living under a dumpster for 11 months this dog gets rescued and goes from sad to happy.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Puppy is so malnourished it might not live, then a miracle happens.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Bernard the poodle had no hair and was blind a family takes him in and loves him.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Maya the cat has Down ’s syndrome.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">There are so many rescue videos you can really wile away the whole day with them. Sometimes I have.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">What do these rescue videos teach me, or show me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Perhaps it is that there are good people in the world.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Perhaps these poor pets stand in for human beings, many suffering, many starving, many without love in our world.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I wonder for every poor dog found under a Winnebago, how many children or men or women there are suffering in our cities, in our “centers of civilization”?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Perhaps I can watch pets but I could not stand in any way to see a baby suffering from deprivation, or abuse, or neglect.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I don’t understand how a person could mistreat a poor animal.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I understand even less how an innocent child could be in pain at the hands of a parent or anyone.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">After all of this stuff is over, how much healing will we need to bring one another back into focus?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Now, back to Hope for Paws, my favorite pet site.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The most important part of saving the dogs or cats is getting them to trust you, and here you really have to creep up on them. Whether they are hiding under a porch, or in a sewer as Winn and Dixie were last night before the flood, they need to establish trust. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">They are afraid, broken, hurt, and a bit skittish, sometimes a little violent.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It seems to me that is a great metaphor for us.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">And that insight is not new.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The angel Gabriel came to Mary.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">She was a nobody, the daughter of a conquered people, a girl without husband (yet) or anything else. She must have been roughhewn. She must have worn scraps for clothing. She must have worked hard day and night to help support her aged parents.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">She must have been careworn and brown, even for one of tender years. She must have been a sight not to behold. She must have smelled. She must have been, I don’t know, poor. She must have been poor, living in a mud house, working day and night, no hope, no future, no plans to be made other than the carpenter.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">She must have been like a frightened beast, after all wasn’t everyone essentially a frightened beast before the coming of this day.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Then the rescue …</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The frenzy of beating wings, of feather dust.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">A whirlwind of light.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The angel called out to the lowest of the earth, the slave of men’s expectations and in that place of squalor a feast of insane beauty was carried out.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Hail full of grace, he said to the girl with rough hands and rougher life</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Hail full of grace, Mary …</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">He knew her name and then he whispered in her ear the secret she had been prepared to hear from the first stirring in her own mother’s womb. She had been prepared to hear it but could the vessel hear the news of what was to be poured into it?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Will you change the course of human history?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Yes, of course, this is why I was brought into the world.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Yes of course, this is God’s dream.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Yes, of course, this is the endpoint of my very soul.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">And God sighed and the breath of that sigh completed the Virgin’s yes.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The breath of that sigh, held so long throughout the time of our collective pain breathed forth full and welcome.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It poured forth like water to a parched earth, like breeze in the arid desert in the farthest outpost of civilization.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">And I wonder, on that day, if the dust of the desert around that town stirred up?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I wonder if the dirt rang out in joy like a rescued puppy.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I wonder if God ran around heaven filled with happiness at seeing his rescue plan come to fulfillment in the poor scared vessel.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Brothers and sisters,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">That is the only promise of Lent, that in the middle of this season of confusion and doubt, there is a certain promise. But Mary’s answer is a certain promise as well.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">You know he had a name, a name which resounds over the hill country of Nazareth and echoes around the world, it’s syllables penetrate the folly of human enterprise, it bounces off the walls of human edifices of power, it seeps through the cracks of quarantine and, like the angel’s beating wings, it portends joy.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Now, perhaps we can find a way to get that onto the You Tube.</span></p>Fr. Denis Robinson, OSBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16278806962010025145noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3426525052148977635.post-66139012066336607132021-03-12T08:31:00.008-08:002021-03-12T08:31:54.676-08:00Priesthood Promises<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1Az3HyQd96p7_dqxeP3uK1ybb-AOxEp0UZPr6OEa7KD6EQ-exP_4J0oQyOTB0mcMgE4Jnl1NWvdgLBR6EQhW2KbLIdwZaIUManr7J2HUzFTeWiTNSVeM3FpgZIYaN9rPKN2i-PkXb7O_j/s1945/Picture1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="974" data-original-width="1945" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1Az3HyQd96p7_dqxeP3uK1ybb-AOxEp0UZPr6OEa7KD6EQ-exP_4J0oQyOTB0mcMgE4Jnl1NWvdgLBR6EQhW2KbLIdwZaIUManr7J2HUzFTeWiTNSVeM3FpgZIYaN9rPKN2i-PkXb7O_j/w640-h320/Picture1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Priesthood Promises</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">March 11, 2021<br /></span><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Whoever is not with me is against me. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Trials </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Stark words, final words, penetrating words from the mouth of Christ.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I would never have thought when I preached to the deacons last year that what would have followed would be days and weeks and months and now a year filled with such trials. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">At every turn, we have had to make decisions that might have affected not only people’s sense of well-being, but their, our, very lives.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Last year at this time I would never have imagined quarantine and the long slog toward summer, then fall, flowing down into winter and now rising into spring. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I would never have imagined that a year later we would be thinking about, preparing for truncated events, glorious events reduced, reduced, reduced. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I would never have wanted you, beloved deacons to have spent the past year like this, wrapped up in a cocoon of chronic care that sometimes, perhaps often, seems like a straitjacket. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">As a father, I would have never wanted my sons not to feel the cool, clean air of freedom sweeping over them. I would never want paranoia, retreat, crippling fear. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I would never have wanted any of that for you, but by God’s grace you have what you have. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">And that, my brothers is a pattern that you will follow. That is the design of the months and years to come. Not of COVID, God willing, not of illness, contagion, and contention, but a pattern of unpredictability. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">None of us can anticipate the days ahead. None of us can know where we will be assigned just a few months on, none of us can know what kind of people we will be called to care for.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">None of us can know what dramas we are going to enact, what passions we will experience, what little deaths we will know. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">None of us can anticipate the future, but all of us can anticipate our response to whatever that future brings. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Whoever is not with me is against me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Jesus draws the line clearly. That line defines us, it tells us what our lives as priests is about, and, perhaps more importantly it tells us what our lives as priests is not about. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">All this business here, all these wordy promises, all these signings and sealings is about who we are and who we are becoming apart from those moments in which we are so carefully wrapped up in vestments and chalices and wish lists and catalogs and comfort. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Because brothers, this vocation is hard, and it is cosmic.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">This vocation is not about comfort. It is not about you settling in with some degree of job security and doing the least you can do to draw your measly paycheck.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">This is not about going out and getting around, investing your goods in the glorious splendor of the local Walmart or Mexican restaurant.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">This is not about golf, or the rust accumulating on your clubs.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">This is not about fine tuning your social skills by escaping to the wilderness of inappropriate places and activities on your day off.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">This is not about bells ringing, dinging, tinging at the appropriate moment during the Mass.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">This is not about lace, this long, or this long on your sleeves and hems.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">This is not about texts that are always transitory and truncated.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">This is not about finery and finagling. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Brothers, these promises tonight, these promises so sterile and forced are setting you up for another kind of life. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">This vocation you have sought after and prayed over and fought for for years, </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">This is about a battle for the human soul. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It is about a battle for your soul. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">This is about pain.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">This is about suffering.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">This is about perseverance.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">This is about fighting.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">This is about bruises.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">This is about wounds.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">And it is not your pain, your suffering, your perseverance, your fighting, your bruises, your wounds.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It is about the pain that comes from rising and falling from the same sins again, again, and again and bringing to you as confessor the same struggles.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It is about the suffering that comes from seeing real hunger and real abuse every day, hunger and abuse that so transcend the boundaries of your pleasant rectory. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It is about perseverance when the obstacles are so difficult to overcome, when people tell lies about you, when people slander your good name, when people cause you pain because of their selfishness, when they stab you in the back.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It is about the fighting that you find in the confused face of a tiny child, caught in a dirty room, bruised by his parents, beaten by his father, concussed by his mother. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It is about the bruises that are hidden under too-voluminous clothing of the wife whose drunken husband beats her up every night just for the hell of it. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It is about the wounds handed on from generation to generation that fester in your parish whether it is in the hills of Appalachia or the suburbs of Little Rock. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">And this is the life of Christ that you now seek to have in you, to be all of you, to control you, to define you, to penetrate you, to absorb you until there is nothing left of you and there is only Christ, only the Lord, only the suffering savior, only Jesus.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">That is what you are promising tonight.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Whoever is not with me is against me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">In ourselves, there still battles two forces.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">There is evil of course. What does it look like?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It looks like your pride seeping out and torturing you in the resentment of a celibate life that creeps up on you and that you curse. You never knew you said. You knew. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It looks like your selfishness that wants some little comfort, some little solace when there is none.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It looks like your willingness to turn the blind eye.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It looks like nothing, a priesthood that become nothing.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">There is evil but there is also the force of good. You are called to be the force of Good.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">What does it look like?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It looks like your emptiness in the face of Christ’s fullness.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It looks like the life of a man whose promises are fulfilled.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It looks like your willingness in the face of Christ’s acceptance of pain and death. And to accept them with joy, </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It looks like your singlemindedness in the face of Christ’ determination to drive the sins of men and women, sins placed upon your shoulders in the burden of the priest, the determination to drive those sins to the Cross and in suffering and in endurance to drink the last drop of that bitter cup of gall. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It looks like your willingness to pound the pavement of a cold, hospital parking lot at 3:00 in the morning because someone you have never heard of is dying in the ER and needs the Sacraments of the Church, needs YOU, the agent of those Sacraments. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It is the force of good that looks like your love, crawling to the altar from sheer exhaustion, and welling up with tears in the face of your utter helplessness, your helplessness without God.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">That is the force of good. Brothers, let us strive after it. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Whoever is not with me is against me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">What force will you bring to the altar tonight?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I know you, I know it will be the force for good.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Now, bring it all my brothers and you will want for nothing. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Make your promises tonight and keep them. </span></p>Fr. Denis Robinson, OSBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16278806962010025145noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3426525052148977635.post-36818559422957733612021-02-26T16:21:00.005-08:002021-02-26T16:21:37.209-08:00Deacon Promises<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcmTbrLy2Q1aRN-Q80dHePYat0IRIgj3-LpPNqkGKW5F-S19FHMqNNXC9-PNO3v6QCgjkFTECkv_GQlKd8mDIrFjTPEMgVs53M6YcIz2EWOjz0jnp_CatuctaO6eUuX8gV6sm4UZWdT1IB/s936/Picture1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="624" data-original-width="936" height="427" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcmTbrLy2Q1aRN-Q80dHePYat0IRIgj3-LpPNqkGKW5F-S19FHMqNNXC9-PNO3v6QCgjkFTECkv_GQlKd8mDIrFjTPEMgVs53M6YcIz2EWOjz0jnp_CatuctaO6eUuX8gV6sm4UZWdT1IB/w640-h427/Picture1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Deacon Promises</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">February 25, 2021<br />Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The weather has been quite mysterious lately. Snow and freezing temperatures give way in just a few days’ time to warmth and birdsong. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Nothing is so beautiful as spring—</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">And yet, out of the dreaded drear of every winter comes poking spring:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Nothing is so beautiful as spring—</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Tonight, here in the dark, here in the middle of a wild February, something is happening:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Spring is happening, or at least teasing. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">And sing they will, they are, they must. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">For they are men of song. What song do they sing?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The song is sung in fire on a mountain, gracing itself into the mind and spirit of Moses. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">What song do they sing?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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 </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The cross-song reaches out unto the azure sky, the descending blue all in a rush with richness.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The racing Lamb, in truth must fair his fling. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We are reminded in tonight’s promises of the poet’s adage: </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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: </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Draw close to God and He will draw close to you. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Let me return at the last to the words of the priest-poet:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">What is all this juice and all this joy?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">In Eden garden. Have, get, before it cloy,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning. </span></p>Fr. Denis Robinson, OSBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16278806962010025145noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3426525052148977635.post-10750030813725104262021-02-26T16:17:00.005-08:002021-02-26T16:17:58.074-08:00Chair of St. Peter<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvt52hsL5y_nixE4R8tDgABZDEzlU4ym3pOTYDnbjAC3hAo9Y7KL1AQx_ty7EbLDPhNjq8mA-1wPeMxiUCl5V-tK6sDspX67KFFAdo8bq9QM97f9wJIMQMOAG0qSPhJpZv_lxaLU64IUgs/s660/Picture1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="660" data-original-width="510" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvt52hsL5y_nixE4R8tDgABZDEzlU4ym3pOTYDnbjAC3hAo9Y7KL1AQx_ty7EbLDPhNjq8mA-1wPeMxiUCl5V-tK6sDspX67KFFAdo8bq9QM97f9wJIMQMOAG0qSPhJpZv_lxaLU64IUgs/s16000/Picture1.jpg" /></a></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The Chair of St. Peter</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">February 22, 2020<br />Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB<br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I wish today we could whisk ourselves off to Israel, to Caesarea Philippi and see for ourselves the great solidity of the Gospel, this Gospel passage unfold for us. Here in Caesarea Philippi, St. Peter receives his commission. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Here in Caesarea Philippi, we have the source of the Jordon River, only a trickle running down from the surrounding hills. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">And … </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Here they are, the Gates of Hell, the temple of Pluto, rising over the nascent river like a gaping mouth, ready to devour all comers. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The Gates of Hell shall not prevail against God’s Church. It has a symbolic force, certainly, but here in Caesarea Philippi, it has a particular solidity. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We cannot go to Israel today, unfortunately, </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">But they do yawn don’t they, those infernal gates? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">From the moment of its inception, our Church has been under siege, today as much as ever.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Its enemies have breached its gates from the earliest years, persecuting God’s people, threatening them with torture and death, with economic ruin and political disenfranchisement. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The enemies of the Church have sought its downfall. They want to see the message of Christ, its proclamation, the evangelization of peoples eradicated. Through wars, through scandals, through storms of fire and rhetoric the Church has been assailed.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Our Church has suffered, is suffering from within and without, from external evil and from internal strife, from division and infighting, from laziness and indifference. Our Church suffers, militantly at times, but so very often in self-defeat, it suffers, is suffering now. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We cannot get a handle on all these closings.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We cannot get a fix on abuse and neglect, even at the hands of priests.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We cannot get around the crisis of morale suffered by so many of our brothers, both in the priesthood and here. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Yet here, is the promise made to Peter, made to the apostles:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The gates of hell shall not prevail against it. The Church cannot fail. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It cannot fail.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It may reside in rocky places, but the beauty of its daily enterprise lives on</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It may be threatened and thumped by critics and crisis, but the wonder of the sacraments shines forth in the midst of the fray</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It may be choked by the clouds of war and pain, of trial and tribulation, but those clouds resolve themselves into patterns of incense through which the shining sun of the Blessed Sacrament shines forth. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It may for a time be disoriented, but it will right itself, the ship of God’s presence will right itself through every gale. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">It may stumble, but it cannot fail, for …</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Here are its ramparts: </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Here is the little child, filled with joy at her first Bible picture book, cardboard lambs and pop-up arks, there is innocence here. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Here is the old man who has learned through tempest and through Job-like burdens that in the end the greatest virtue, perhaps the only virtue is loyalty, loyalty to those who have supported you and cared for you.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Here is the poor couple, not much money, but so much love, sharing the true gifts of life with a slew of family they have, at times, struggled to feed, but in the end have nurtured on something greater than physical food, the manna of goodness and gentleness and wonder.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Here is the sick person, struggling to breath, drawing his last breath and his eyes are filled with tears of recognition of someone, some familiar one holding out a hand and saying: welcome home.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">My brothers and sisters: Here is the Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church when love, pure love is its rampart.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I think of those apostles standing in that place, in Caesarea Philippi, looking ironically at the temple of Pluto. I wonder if they knew that all these years later, that place would be a ruin, but the Church, built on the rock of Peter’s faith would stand forever? </span></p>Fr. Denis Robinson, OSBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16278806962010025145noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3426525052148977635.post-60483508984410087612021-02-26T16:15:00.006-08:002021-02-26T16:15:56.914-08:00Feast of St. Agatha<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9A3i-h_Cly36e9FiDtcIotoll6LH59u8ujtcMRRkI_lZOlzcanhQzqUVnEbpO91AAA6AY96XC1L6wwGq_XIlNdunyIFh-9qmKcGL8YkCVx1D7Yb26GgIEWviA1HPb8kUeOR7tT6XYG99e/s676/Picture1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="676" data-original-width="528" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9A3i-h_Cly36e9FiDtcIotoll6LH59u8ujtcMRRkI_lZOlzcanhQzqUVnEbpO91AAA6AY96XC1L6wwGq_XIlNdunyIFh-9qmKcGL8YkCVx1D7Yb26GgIEWviA1HPb8kUeOR7tT6XYG99e/s16000/Picture1.jpg" /></a></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Feast of St. Agatha</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">February 5, 2021<br /></span><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Let love continue.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Do not neglect hospitality,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">for through it some have unknowingly entertained angels.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Violence</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The readings today are filled with violence and that seems to be fitting for the life of the saint we remember on this cold February day. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Poor Agatha, trapped among a pack of Sicilian gangsters, she suffered at the hands of her tormentors the indignity of having her breasts cut off. Later, she became the further victim of a kind of morbid pre-pornographic art. Says more about the era that created the art than it does about the sainted subject. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Today, in Italy she is remembered for her little cakes, round, pink cakes with a cherry on top. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">How indelicate to the memory of a great saint.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Violence</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Violence was part and parcel for the early Church, even before the Last Supper the story today of John the Baptist. What a tawdry death for a great ascetical saint. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Imprisoned in the court of Herod. Day by day and night by night he had to listen to the din of decadence coming from the rancid halls above. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Day by day, he experienced his message of freedom and the coming of the Messiah reduced to drunken jeers and excess until at last, this great prophet, this great man of God met his end at the hands of a jealous queen and her teenage daughter.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Violence</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Perhaps violence has befallen us a bit.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">What does it look like? Doubt and worry about the condition of our nation, of our social order?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Does it look like suspicion, even in the Church of other people’s ideals and motivations.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Here does it manifest itself in the quagmire of holding ourselves in.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We are quarantined and sometimes isolation can turn inward.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We begin to mull and think about things. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Sometimes our lives can become like the halls of Herod, turning on ourselves, rancid, a stench somewhere in the corner, something dead that we can’t quite find. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">There was good news for Agatha, aside from a shout-out in the Roman Canon every time it was used but the rapidity of the words slide so that she becomes “AgathaLucyAgnes”, perhaps the moniker of an Alabama cheerleader. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">But there is Good News, and … </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">The Good News for Agatha was the Good News. She lived a frightening life. She lived in Sicily for goodness sake. She died a terrible death, but she went to heaven, Agatha has the privilege of serving forever in the sight of God. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">She has the privilege of serving forever in the sight of God, </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Of serving us, base and ungrateful as we can be. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Frightened as we can be. Suspicious as we can be. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">There is good news for us because Agnes and all the other boys and girls in heaven have a song:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Let love continue.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Do not neglect hospitality,</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">for through it some have unknowingly entertained angels.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">And so, here we are. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Here we are entertaining angels, but even the angels don’t always know it. </span></p>Fr. Denis Robinson, OSBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16278806962010025145noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3426525052148977635.post-39958279559867315792021-02-04T18:23:00.004-08:002021-02-04T18:23:55.068-08:00Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ7JvkXLyoY-wnObEOw1elW1L9UGCaE3W-uOPN3Mu44jjLkuAugBvjuxwJ-rQ23D91uZ4N9uRZISzijETW-jGYIT0slhye-l_4pdGJdOBrUyvAWUdwlr_-hJakVAOI9_8cTaIJNSf50LkL/s281/download.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="281" data-original-width="217" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ7JvkXLyoY-wnObEOw1elW1L9UGCaE3W-uOPN3Mu44jjLkuAugBvjuxwJ-rQ23D91uZ4N9uRZISzijETW-jGYIT0slhye-l_4pdGJdOBrUyvAWUdwlr_-hJakVAOI9_8cTaIJNSf50LkL/w309-h400/download.png" width="309" /></a></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">January 31, 2021<br />Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I know who you are—the Holy One of God!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">They knew. The devils knew. Do we?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">My brothers, these days are days full of consternation and trouble.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Look around and see. Perhaps it is not so different from what our ancestors saw sitting in that synagogue in Capernaum.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Look around and see. What do you see?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We see empty chairs where our friends should be sitting with us on this bright Sunday morning.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We see pain, I know, pain in faces that try to put on a brave front but worry, O so subtly, how far will this thing go?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We see a stiffening of body and mist behind the mask, wondering, will I be next?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We see a community split apart, worshipping apart, eating apart, separated and questioning.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We see trouble, I cannot lie. I cannot stand up as the pastor of this flock and say there is not trouble here, though I know how strong you all are. We may be strong but the evil wind still howls against this house.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I know who you are—the Holy One of God!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">They knew. The devils knew. Do we?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We are weak. I know that.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Our bodies are weak.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Our spirits are weak.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Our souls are weak. And still God provides.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I wonder what Jesus was thinking as he stood in that synagogue, in that familiar town. He knew those people. He knew them all. He could have cataloged their fears and their doubts. Any good pastor can.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">He knew them as well as the devil knew him.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">And of course, he knew the evil one.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Do we?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Do we know the evil one?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">More importantly, do we know Christ?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">When we think of the pain and doubt around us and within us we can do nothing more than look to Christ.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We think we can serve our own needs.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We think we are self-sufficient.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">We think that we can solve everything by ourselves, even in these dangerous days.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">But, there is a call that we must answer and that is look to Christ.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Look to Christ and see those nail-scarred hands, hands that served, hands that healed, hands now invaded by the impersonal, imperious steel of sin, our sin, see his hands that were nailed to the rough wood of the cross for us and understand the true nature of discipleship, of priesthood, the true value of sacrificial service.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">That is the Holy One of God that even the devils knew. That is our God.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Look to Christ and see his feet, feet that had wandered across the barren landscape of Palestine and the barren landscape of the human condition. See in his pierced feet the end of all our journeying, our endless wandering over the world, our meandering through the questions of life, a life filled with pain and need, a wandering that can only lead to one place, can only lead back to the Hill of Calvary.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">And this is the Holy One of God, the King of Israel, the savior.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Look to Christ, look to Christ my brothers and see his face, the face of love and compassion, see in his eyes the testimony of a million years, discern in his glance the creation and turning of galaxies. On that face is inscribed the map of human history, a history crowned with thorns and bereft of hope, until he appears to overwhelm the threat of sin and disease and death.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Here is the Holy One of God, do we know him?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Look to Christ and see his side, rent open for the life of the world, flowing with blood and water, a sign of contradiction but also a sign of fruitfulness, fertility in suffering.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Look to Christ and see in him the woundedness of our world, the piercedness of our corporate soul, See there the remnant of generations of infidelity, of the forlornness of neglect. See in the cross everything that has ever troubled us, everything that is torturing us now.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">And then see the Holy One of God conquer it.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Look to Christ and learn who you are. Do not be unwilling to embrace him. O my brothers we cannot help but take up the mantle of Christ and know him alone as a source of life.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">If there is a message in this crisis, if there is meaning in these days, it can only be a call to calmly realize who we are as we realize, again and more deeply who Jesus is.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">Are we, even in confusion able to say with the devil himself?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I know who you are—the Holy One of God! </span></p>Fr. Denis Robinson, OSBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16278806962010025145noreply@blogger.com