Homily for the Solemnity of Saint Benedict,
Patriarch of Western Monasticism, 2007
Today we celebrate the grace that has been present
to us in our jubilarians.
Seventy, sixty, fifty, and twenty-five years ago,
our jubilarians professed their vows
in the presence of God, the saints, the abbot and community.
Truly, by the mercy of God,
they have offered their bodies as a living sacrifice to God.
We also celebrate the grace of God at work
in our Brother Joseph who desires to make solemn vows.
Brother Willie,
You are proof positive
against any one who would say
that there are no characters in this monastery anymore.
You made vows in 1937
and were immediately deployed as a skilled herdsman,
working as herd boss from 1937 through 1955.
You then went to Red Lake and cared for the herd there
from 1955 through 1966, when it was sold.
Truly this was a huge transition for you and the community.
From 1966 until 2001 you were the campus night watchman.
Known by every one on campus and especially beloved by students,
you listened to them with the ear of your heart
and gave solid, salt-of-the-earth counsel.
Back in the lumber shop
you retrieved and repaired broken furniture
and made beautiful wooden toys for kids --
all proceeds going to the poor.
Brother Willie, thank you for your service and witness
to simplicity and frugality in monastic life.
Father Don,
you taught theology for thirty seven years in the university,
served as a faculty resident for thirty two years,
and for two eight year stints as chaplain for the university.
Before the dawn of channel 8, e-mail, and pod-casts,
you communicated through a widely read weekly Chaplain's Letter
that was a skilled blend of theological and spiritual reflection,
humor, and nod to current events.
Because of your amazing memory for students and their names,
through personal contact and celebrating weddings with them,
you became alumni chaplain in 1996
and are an important link to our alums.
You have also regularly published aids for homilists,
both in book form and for the Looseleaf Lectionary.
Thank you, Don, for your deep love for students
and your ongoing pastoral care for them.
Father Pat,
you taught English for forty three years,
forty of these in the university.
You were a major part
of every major curricular change in the university
and the College of Saint Benedict
for at least 30 of those 40 years.
You love words and the study of the origin of words
and you have shared this with us
in your role as editor of Confrere for the past 13 years.
Here you give a word of the month and it is always a winner.
You served as a faculty resident for our students for 20 years
and as a chaplain for the sisters at Saint Benedicts for 14 years.
You have also delved deeply into the tradition of Vipissana meditation
and have brought greater awareness of meditation
as an important monastic practice to all of us.
Thank you, Pat, for your generous service,
for your love and care of words,
and your gentle sense of humor.
Father Allan,
you have dedicated almost 40 years of your life
to the teaching of liturgy in the School of Theology and Seminary.
Generations of students have benefited
from your careful analysis of texts,
your sound centrist theological guidance
and your practical awareness of how to celebrate liturgy.
In fact, you once collaborated with confreres
in the making of a video entitled
How not to celebrate Eucharist!
In that learning situation,
the via negativa was surely an effective pedagogical device.
Our prayer life here at Saint John's
has been profoundly influenced by your leadership
and sensibility for the way monastic prayer looks and feels.
In our community you have been a consistently thoughtful
and community minded person.
You love words and I can count on seeing you each Sunday morning
making a copy of a crossword puzzle from the newspaper,
eager to move to its solution.
Thank you, Allan, for your dedicated and generous service
and for being one of my mentors.
Father Brennan,
you began by teaching English and theology at the Prep School
but quickly moved into serving the Church in parish ministry.
Beginning as an associate at Saint Joseph
and then Saint Benedict's in the Bronx
your leadership ability was quickly recognized.
You were pastor of Saint Benedict's parish for six years,
then seven years at Saint Boniface in Cold Spring,
and seven years at Saint Bernard's in Saint Paul.
As a monk-priest you brought a strong presence
along with a gentle love for people
and a passionate commitment to the liturgical and theological
vision of the Second Vatican Council.
hi recent years you have served the community as an archivist,
and by being in charge of assigning cars on a daily basis
-- no easy task!
Brennan, thank you for your leadership and service,
through thick and thin.
Father Geoffrey,
You began by working in campus ministry
but your organizational skills and ability
to focus on a task were immediately obvious
and you became director of residential programs for two years.
After ordination you moved into pastoral ministry,
first as an associate pastor at Elizabeth Ann Seton,
then pastor of Sacred Heart parish in Freeport.
When your classmate Jonathan persuaded you
that you would be an excellent prior,
you did this for a full seven, count them, seven years.
After a time for renewal, you were ready to go
to Trinity Benedictine Monastery,
but at the last minute I asked you to become pastor
of Saint Augustine's parish in Saint Cloud for two years.
Over the past three years you have become
an outstanding director of development for the abbey.
As prior and as development director,
as chair of the Guesthouse program committee
you were a major force
in getting the Abbey Guesthouse and Pavilion built.
Thank you, Geoffrey, for your flexibility and resilience,
for your generous leadership and service.
Father Columba,
you came to us from the great state of Texas via New England,
but I believe your heart is now in the Midwest.
Before you even completed novitiate
I believe that you were teaching classes on pre-Benedictine sources
based on your master's degree study of the early Church writings.
You have become one of the finest scholars
on monastic life and thought in the world
and have written a benchmark book on John Cassian.
You were able to bring all of this
to the work of formation for four years.
However, in you the skills for administration
compete directly with the skills for scholarship and teaching,
for in the past four years you have been executive director
of the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library.
With the dawning of the digital era
and the horrible destruction in the Middle East,
and with your energetic and diplomatic leadership,
HMML now has fourteen ongoing preservation projects.
With computer technology
these beautiful legacy manuscripts can be made available
to teachers and scholars in the Eastern Churches.
Thank you, Columba, for your energetic and generous leadership
in so many areas of our life, for your deep caring for the monastic life.
Father Jonathan,
your twenty-five years have been split almost equally
between pastoral work in a parish
and teaching and administration here on campus.
You began by teaching theology and canon law
in the department of theology and the School of Theology.
Your interest and education in canon law
has kept you involved in some way
with a marriage tribunal, teaching canon law
and working on other diocesan law issues over all these years.
Your service as prior to the monastery for five years
was punctuated by Abbot Jerome's election
as abbot primate on September 19, 1992, and the sudden realization
that you were the administrator for the community.
As pastor of Holy Name parish in Medina,
you followed one of our giants, Father Arnold Weber,
not an easy transition,
but one that you handled with grace and resilience.
And over the past two years you guided the transition of the parish
from our spiritual care to that of the Archdiocese.
Thank you, Jonathan, for the pastoral care and leadership
that you have given in the community and in the larger Church.
Brother Dennis,
you taught English for eight years
and were academic dean for two at the Prep School
before going on to study philosophy.
Since returning,
you have given yourself full time to the work of teaching
and serving as a faculty resident to university students.
In all that you do your real passion is to lead us as we think about
and act about questions related to justice and peace.
So it is not surprising that for the past ten years,
you have been an active member
and leader for Partners Across Borders,
and have led a group of local citizens to Tenancingo, El Salvador,
a sister city of Saint Cloud.
You have helped the university anchor
a new study abroad program in Guatemala,
where the experience of students is more strongly linked
to issues of poverty and justice.
Closer to home
you have been a minister of hospitality at our liturgies
ever since you have came into the monastery.
You are also extremely gifted at getting bicycle parts over the Internet,
and an avid rider yourself,
and you gave my 20-year old bike a new lease on life.
Thank you, Dennis, for your generous spirit,
your good sense of humor and delightful wit
in writing "Guy Noir" scripts, and your excellent service.
Brother Joseph,
today you make solemn vows to God and to this community.
As you can see from the lives of these confreres,
you can expect your life to take some unexpected twists and turns.
But the community is constant
in opening itself to the mystery of God's love.
None of us knows what will be asked of us along the way.
We do know that Christ will be with us
to support and sustain us on this journey.
Surely God's promise is being fulfilled in our midst.
We have been abundantly blessed
because of the graced commitment of these men,
who have preferred nothing to Christ.
May all of you, our solemnly professed,
our jubilarians, confreres, oblates, and guests,
have a joyous and blessed Feast of Benedict today.
Abbot John Klassen OSB
July 11, 2007
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