Monday of Holy Week
Chrism Mass
Cathedral of Mary Our Queen
March 26, 2024
Could We Have Imagined?
A few weeks ago, a fellow bishop asked me, “When you were ordained, did you ever imagine we’d be facing the kinds of challenges and problems we’re facing today?” The answer, of course, is “no”, at least in my case. I can’t say that me and my seminary classmates weren’t told that there would be challenges and difficult days in the priesthood. I can’t say that we weren’t advised about sorts of challenges we’d encounter. Yet, back in the day, nearly a half century ago, the situation the Church finds herself in today was hard for me to imagine. Nor did I imagine the kinds of challenges I would face in my ministry. So often I think: isn’t it good that the Lord allows us to experience life day by day and year by her, rather than showing us everything all at once.
Dear brother priests, I’m wondering if your experience is similar. When you entered the seminary, whether years ago or even recently, could you have foreseen the challenges and pressures which you and your brother priests face on a daily basis? Let me mention two of them: The Seek the City process and the Chapter 11 Reorganization of the Archdiocese… not to mention the daily cares and anxieties of ministry and administration. I’m guessing you are also thankful to the Lord that these challenges unfold gradually, rather than all at once.
This is not to say that our lives of service to the Church are glum. It is not to say that we are unhappy. Or lacking hope. Or that we think the vocation we pursued was a mistake. Far from it. Despite all the challenges we face, we are a joyful bunch! Most every day, we find ourselves thanking God for our vocation. Most every day, we encounter consolations in prayer, in one another, and in the people we are privileged to serve. And as the years go by, if we continue to pray and be steadfast in our vocation, the Lord’s grace informs our day to day experience, imparting to us a wisdom and strength we did not have at the outset. The Lord doesn’t show us everything at once, not simply to avoid shocking us, but rather so that through our experience, including the challenges, misunderstandings, and suffering, we will grow in the ways of his wisdom and love.
Renewed Promises
At the Chrism Mass, dear brothers, we annually renew the promises we made on that happy day when we were ordained to the priesthood, on that very day when the sevenfold grace of the Spirit was invoked upon us and when we were anointed with the oil of gladness, the Holy Spirit. Let us renew those promises again today, with joy and confidence.
For in renewing our promises, we are in effect renewing ourselves for mission— not just any mission, but the one Jesus announced in the Nazareth synagogue: Glad tidings to the poor. Liberty to captives. Recovery of sight to the blind. Freedom for the oppressed. A year of grace acceptable to the Lord. Those words of Isaiah which Jesus made his own are reflected in a thousand different ways in the priestly ministry we share – as we proclaim the faith, set free from sin, open the eyes of faith, lift burdens from shoulders, celebrate the sacred mysteries year by year. You and I can think of a thousand interactions we have had this past year: with the faithful, with those seeking for something more, with the alienated, interactions when the mission of Jesus came alive and was reproduced in and through our sharing in his priesthood. If those interactions brought healing, peace, and reassurance, they also brought something more: freedom from sin and death that Christ won by his death and resurrection.
This night, conscious of our weakness, let us be renewed in the mission the Lord entrusted to us at our ordination, a mission which continues unabated no matter what challenges we are facing, for it is a mission we do with the strength that comes from God. At the solemn blessing and consecration of the oils, let praise and thanksgiving fill our hearts as we are renewed not merely in the promises we made but in the anointing we have received to carry forward the mission of Jesus, “in season and out of season” (2 Tim 4:2). It is in the strength that comes from the anointing of the Spirit and from the Eucharist we celebrate day by day that we find the strength for ministry and mission at this time, and in this place, and under these circumstances.
We Are Not Alone
And we are not alone. Ministry, like love, diffuses itself and is to be shared. On this evening when we are renewed in our priestly ministry, we recognize gratefully our co-workers in the Lord’s vineyard – deacons with their ministry of word, sacrament, and charity, and those who are preparing to be ordained deacons; women and men in consecrated life who point the way to the Kingdom of God even as they sponsor and sustain so many ministries in the Church’ life; dedicated lay women and men who staff our parishes and who staff archdiocesan-wide ministries of evangelization and charity. Let me mention our seminarians, nearly 60 of them preparing to serve as priests of the Archdiocese – and those here this evening and elsewhere who are discerning a vocation to the priesthood.
We are not alone. We journey together. Your presence this night in such great numbers testifies to this – our priests, deacons, religious, laity, seminarians and discerners. This night my own heart is filled with gratitude, for your prayers, your support, your forgiveness of my own weakness … but most of all that the Lord has brought us together in this time and place, with these gifts and ministries, with this set of challenges – and has said to you and me: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon you!” May his word be fulfilled in our hearing!