Priesthood Ordination Homily
Cathedral of Mary Our Queen
June 22, 2024
A few days ago, as Fr. Tyler and I pulled up in front of my residence, I observed the people walking up and down North Charles Street. I remarked to Fr. Tyler, “They don’t look very happy, do they?” In fact, most looked downright miserable. And if various studies are to be believed, many people are not only unhappy, they are also suffering from loneliness, isolation, and anxiety, not to mention those in our midst who face violence and poverty every day as well as people throughout the world who face oppression and persecution. Not a very cheerful beginning to an ordination homily!
But I say this, dear brothers so soon to be ordained, because Isaiah’s words were fulfilled in Christ Jesus, the Word made flesh. It was he who spoke the Word that liberates us from the shadow of death, the Word that guides us along the ways of peace. This is the Word you are to announce, preach, and bear witness to as Sunday after Sunday and day after day you stand at the pulpit, interact with you people, offer instruction, and lead by example. You are not offering happy talk amid sadness nor a magical panacea, but rather the liberating Word of Jesus Christ…in the words of Pope St. Paul VI: “I can never cease to speak of Christ for he is our truth and our light; ‘he is the way, the truth, and the life.’ He is our bread, our source of living water who allays our hunger and satisfies our thirst. He is our shepherd, our leader, our ideal, our comforter, our brother.” Yes, dear brothers, it is his Word, not ours, that liberates and redeems. It is his Word, not the world’s, that illumines the meaning of our lives, shows us our authentic dignity, points to kind of world we should be building, and leads us to our ultimate destiny to be sharers in the Kingdom of God. Preach his Word in season and out, when convenient and inconvenient.
For the Word you preach is not an idea but a reality, not a philosophy but indeed a Person, the Person of Christ. As both Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis have often said, “Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.” That Person is Jesus Christ, and that event is his Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection . . . the great high priestly acts of Jesus our great High Priest. In his Name and in his Person you are being ordained to speak and act, so that you and those you serve will indeed encounter Christ in his mysteries, so that you and those you serve will not only hear Jesus’ message of liberation but indeed be set free by the reality of his Death and Resurrection, in which we participate through the Mass and the Sacraments. Thus you will immerse those you baptize into Christ’s Death and Resurrection. You will forgive sins through the Paschal Mystery made present by the Spirit, Standing at the altar to proclaim the death of the Lord, you will re-present it so that those who are weary and heavily burdened might share in its power to illuminate, to strengthen, to transform, to forgive and redeem. You are ministers not of ideas but of realities, the “really real” reality of Christ’s Body broken and his Blood outpoured. Ordination will render you a priest sacramentally, but it is in your life of prayer and virtue that you become priests after Christ’s own heart!
Encountering Christ in Word and Sacrament changes everything. It gives life “its definitive direction” for Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.” Indeed, our encounter with Christ by Word and Sacrament should give rise in ourselves and in those we serve to a new way of life, described in the Gospel. For if we are no longer slaves to sin and to the sadness of the world, we are free…free to be the friends of Christ, free to experience his love, free to love others as he has loved us, with a love that transforms. Our mutual friendship with Christ must characterize our relationship, me as your bishop and you as priests who are my closest co-workers, bound together in love by the obedience of Christ to the Father’s will. You are also to love your fellow priests as Christ loves them and be builders of unity, fraternity and holiness, and not only among your fellow priests, but in the Church at large. You are thus to build up parish communities filled with friends and disciples of the Lord, missionary disciples with whom you work to gather in the full number of God’s People. You are to love the poor and vulnerable as Christ loves them, conscious that he has endowed them with infinite dignity.
Dear brothers, I couldn’t be happier than on this day of your ordination as I join with you, your family and friends, brother bishops, priests, & deacons, religious, seminarians, and parishioners from near and far in praying that your priestly ministry – though not free of suffering – will be forever faithful, continually joyous, and immensely fruitful, glorifying God, building up the Church, and bringing many to Christ and his love! Que Dios los bendiga!