Ordination Homily // Ron Howard
St. Ignatius Parish, Ijamsville
Dec. 14, 2024
A Cloud of Witnesses
We’ve gathered in joy this morning for the priestly ordination of Ron Howard.
Ron, you are surrounded by your family, by soon-to-be brother priests, by deacons and seminarians, by friends and admirers, by parishioners from here at St. Ignatius, St. John the Evangelist in Westminster, Christ the King in Glen Burnie, and other parishes where you served during your priestly formation.
And we are surrounded by “a [heavenly] cloud of witnesses” – the Blessed Virgin Mary, the saints, the angels, your dear father, who are praying with us and for us in the communion of saints.
Above all, we have entered into the presence of Christ, the great High Priest. He has spoken “that gracious word of his” which sheds rays of divine glory on what we are about to do. Let us reflect further on that grace-filled word . . .
“Say Not . . .”
Beginning with the reading from the Prophet Jeremiah. You listened and heard God call Jeremiah to be a prophet, and your call, Ron, to be a priest resonated in your heart. You heard the Lord say: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you were born I dedicated you . . .” (Jer 1:4-5). God called you to be a priest from the first moment of your existence, not according to my timetable or yours, but in his own good time, and according to the plans of his heart. And he formed you in the heart of the Church so that you might answer his call.
You will answer that call every day, for the rest of your life. Jeremiah protested, “I do not know how to speak, I am to young!” There will be days when you will want to say to the Lord, “I am too inexperienced to deal with this or that, it’s too much for me.” Then hear the Lord say to you, as he said to Jeremiah, ‘Say not I am too young or too old or too inexperienced to do whatever the Church may require of me.’ In complete freedom, with generosity and detachment, allow the Lord to send you and use you whenever and wherever the Church needs you for the sake of its evangelizing mission.
As you encounter challenges in the priesthood, take stock of your gifts but take even greater stock of the Lord’s promise to Jeremiah: “See, I place my words in your mouth!” Let your every utterance be saturated with joyful faith in the living Word of God, a faith nurtured by prayer and by a living relationship with Jesus Christ. Then you will be equipped to go where you are needed. Then you will have the freedom to say, “Here I am. Send me!”
Whom the Lord Sends
In his providential love, God the Father has elected to send you as one who participates in the high priesthood of his Son, Jesus Christ, through priestly ordination in the power of the Spirit.
He has called you to be “a priest forever in the line of Melchizedek”, that mysterious figure of the Old Testament whose obscure origins foretells the divine origins of Christ the High Priest, origins shrouded in the unapproachable light of divine glory.
God the Father looks upon you with love. You are his son. He loves you with an unimaginably deep and beautiful love. With Jesus, you are to remain in his love by fulfilling the command to love others as you have been loved. Like Jesus, you are obey the Father’s will by laying down your life for others. For the priesthood of the Crucified requires a total gift of self – body and soul, mind and heart.
Consecrated to Christ by the prayer of the Church and the laying on of hands, your life is rooted in and patterned after the priesthood of Christ, the One who showed the greatest love by laying down his life for us. Thus, does Jesus call you his friend as he sends you forth to bear the good and lasting fruit of the Gospel.
Good and Lasting Fruit
What is the good and lasting fruit that Jesus will seek from your ministry? What is the point of preaching, baptizing and hearing confessions? Why celebrate the Eucharist, preside at marriages, & tend to the sick & dying? What do you hope to accomplish by a life of pastoral love and service, especially for young, the unchurched, and those who are in trouble?
The answer is love, for as St. John Vianney said, “The priesthood is the love of the heart of Christ.” The good fruit, the harvest, for which the Lord ordains and sends you is love. The whole of your life is dedicated to enabling others to encounter Christ and thus to be caught up in the mystery of divine love – to know that they are loved by God, to know that the can share in the intimate, mutual love of the Father and the Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit – and to love others as they themselves have been loved. It is to bring those you serve to confess what you yourself confess: “We have come to know and believe in the love God has for us” (1 John 4:16). Once we and those we serve know that we are loved intimately by God, then, in the power of that, we will love one another as Christ as loved us, and our love will overflow onto a weary and torn world searching for answers.
This is what builds up the communion of the Church, member by member, living stone upon living stone. This is what preserves the good order of the Church and helps protect it against those who would undermine both her faith and her mission to spread the Gospel. It is in the truth of God’s love for us
that you, together with me and with our brother priests, seek to build up the Body of Christ in this, the Premier See.
Mother of Priests
No one knew the intimacy and depth of God’s love more than Mary, the Immaculate Mother of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. As we prepare to celebrate the birth of Christ, the blessed fruit of Mary’s womb, I entrust you, Ron, and your priestly ministry to her loving intercession. Through her prayers, may your priesthood be joyful, fruitful, and full of grace, all the days of your life.
Read the Catholic Review’s coverage of the ordination:
‘I’m a priest of Jesus Christ’: Father Rondall C. Howard III ordained a priest in joyful liturgy