Immaculate Conception - 2006

SOLEMN PROFESSION OF

FATHER KEVIN WALSH

Genesis 3:9-15, 20

Ephesians 1:3-6, 11-12

Luke 1:26-38

We are all witnesses, Father Kevin, to what you seek, what you desire, what you are willing to give up all so that you may possess. We are quite a diverse cloud of witnesses. Your family – father Vincent, your twin brother Gregory, your brothers Stephen and Matthew with their families, your sister Candice, your uncle and several cousins – two bishops, David and Anthony, three Monsignors, Pat, Phil and Fred, some twenty priests and nuns, Mepkin's employees, the whole diverse throng of friends, personal and communal, and of course your Mepkin brothers. We are all gathered here for one reason, and one reason only, to witness to and to share in the gift of yourself to God through monastic vows to the brotherhood of Mepkin.

And where we have begun, there we will end and there we will make a new beginning. Isn't that the insight of the poet?

What we call the beginning is often the end

And to make an end is to make a beginning.

The end is where we start from.

And what is this end that is the beginning, the beginning that is the end?

“The mercy of God and of the Brothers.”

That is what we heard you say.

Father Kevin, you will pronounce more binding words in this rite. You will hear more poetic expressions; you will be treated to more evocative images. But you will never touch a deeper bedrock for your life; never strike a truer chord than you just have.

Keep these words ever before your eyes, set them as a seal on your heart, write them on the doorposts of your cell.

You have come here also for one reason, and one reason only: to seek mercy, to receive mercy, and to give mercy.

And this will take all you have, Father Kevin, and often more than you think you have. You are not choosing an easy life. Mepkin is a claustral paradise, but it is no country club. Mepkin offers Joy Never Ending, but only through the way of the Cross.

The desert you are entering is a place of temptation, not unlike the garden where Adam and Eve entertained the serpent. Will you try to hide yourself as they did, or will you allow yourself to walk the path of humility and to be stripped of all that is not of God, all that is not of mercy? The choice is yours. Not just today in this solemn assembly, but everyday when “the highway dust is over all”, as the poet so poignantly put it.

And why are you doing this? Because you yourself, as St Paul has so eloquently described, have been chosen before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love…. To live for the praise of God's glory.”

Mepkin offers you a place where such living can happen, a place “where prayer has been valid.” A place where you do not have to concoct all the words, but where you may enter into a tradition, be taught and formed in a school of the Lord's service, where you may know the “good pleasure of God's will.”

And how will this happen? Look to the Gospel, Father Kevin, and learn from the Immaculate Mother of God, your patroness. “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

Let it be.

Let it be with me.

Let it be with me according to your word.

Are you ready to seek such mercy?

I am.

Are you ready to receive such mercy?

I am.

Are you ready to give such mercy?

I am.

Then let us proceed.

Father Kevin, I was not supposed to be here to receive your solemn profession. There was another with whom you worked so faithfully, with whom you worked so intimately, for whom you anticipated his every desire. He longed to be here. He had such an influence over your monastic journey that he desired with all the ardor of his being to see and receive this binding commitment. And the beauty of our life and the reality of the communion of saints tell us that he is here and rejoices and with those bushy eyebrows says: ‘Come, Father Kevin, enter into the mercy of God and of the Order.'