Dr. Klein's Commencement Address

Commencement Address 

by Dr. Christa Klein, Ph.D

Theological Institute for the New Evangelization 

St. John’s Seminary Boston     

23 May 2017

How blessed to be here in St. John’s Chapel this Easter season with you, Your Eminence Cardinal O’Malley, Msgr. Moroney, Fr. O’Connor, Dr. Metilly, Dr. Lingertat, Dr. Fahrig,  and all faculty and staff who support this remarkable Institute and Seminary. I have come to know this institution and to pray for it, first as a consultant to the seminary board and now as a trustee.  And, how blessed I am to be for the first time here with you, dear graduates, along with the families, priests and friends who encouraged you. 

 

I have read your biographies. Your goals for study and your goals as graduates are inspiring. You thanked those who encouraged you. No doubt these people have also put up with you as you worked, sometimes successfully, to balance your studies with your already full lives. 

What you and I share is a profound love for the Reality that is beyond full knowing. Yet, through study, worship, formation, and friendship, now we recognize that Reality more fully in mind and heart. In this Easter Season, once again, the Gospel readings from the Evangelists Luke and John teach us about how human the central doctrines of Christianity are. 

 Caryll Houselander's marvelous meditation for this season, written in the 1950’s as she herself was racked with suffering, uses Christ’s post-Resurrection appearances to illustrate how personally we must convey Christ’s love. Otherwise, in our own apostolic zeal we may use our learning and devotions as “sledgehammers,” as she says, seeking conversion by concussion.  [The Risen Christ, p. 42]

In John’s accounts of these appearances, Jesus reveals himself personally to his friends and calls each to a higher task. He treats the highly emotional Mary Magdalene gently and then entrusts her, of all people, with telling his disciples that he is ascending to his and her Father, to his and her God. Jesus responds to disciples, tortured with guilt over having abandoned him, by giving them the gift of the Holy Spirit and telling them to forgive the sins of others. Peter, the three-time denier, is given three opportunities to express his love and then sent as a shepherd to Jesus’ own flock.

 

But my focus today will be on disciples like you, the studious ones in Luke’s gospel, who were walking away from Jerusalem to Emmaus. Houselander says that these scholarly men “must come to the point of communion with [Jesus] through the travail of the mind.” “Step by step he takes them back through the Scriptures, leading them to know him by thinking their own thoughts, by linking up the academic knowledge they have acquired in the past with the events of the day, and thrashing out the problem so baffling to intellectuals of all ages, the problem of suffering.” [p. 39] They finally recognize him in the breaking of the bread and only then recall how “their hearts burned as he opened the scriptures to them.” I suspect that you know about that burning heart from your own studies and have glimpsed the new Reality more fully in the breaking of the Bread here at St. John’s.

I further suspect that your burning heart and hunger for the Mass led you to St. John’s Theological Institute in the first place and that now you dream of carrying that zeal with you--likely not as a sledgehammer, but as an instrument for hearing and respecting the needs of others and discovering how they can, in mind and heart, know the love of Christ. The experts who write about the craft of catechesis say that there should be no opposition set up between “the personal and the propositional” in both the content of the Faith and its transmission. [Wiley, deCointet, Morgan, The Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Craft of Catechesis, p. 59.]

The fullness of Christ in the Church calls for a fully human experience in us. As one  received into the Roman Catholic Church only 14 years ago, I had tasted elements of that fullness as a Lutheran raised in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. There I experienced the riches of Scripture, the doctrine of the Real Presence, the historic creeds, the Western liturgy, and great hymnody. The move from there toward Catholicism was gradual but unrelenting. I was claimed by the Catholic Church’s deeper understanding of human nature, its more complete sacramental life, greater dependence on Scripture and Tradition, the Magisterium, and its moral teachings, devotions, and universality. I could not go back, even in those low moments when I experience liturgies, homilies, hymnody, church architecture, or youth ministry that do not do justice to the fullness of the Church. (Converts are snobs, you know, given to the temptation to use the sledgehammer.)

You as graduates, like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, have had your eyes opened.   Now let’s consider the institutions that will structure your new or continuing ministries. Most are non-profits. These human organizations belong to the created world and you are called to assist in their on-going creation. Whether you are on college campuses, in hospitals, parishes, schools, prisons, publishing, or chancery offices, your very presence will involve you in organizational change. 

I would like to share a line with you that I once shared with the Board of Trustees.   “Organization is re-organization and that’s all there is to it.” So spoke J. Irwin Miller of Columbus, IN.  He was a mid to late 20^th century Protestant hero who headed his successful family business, the Cummins Engine Co, helped spearhead the national ecumenical movement, and worked with Presidents Kennedy and Johnson on the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  He was also a seminary trustee, and the philanthropist who paid internationally renowned architects to make his city’s public buildings models of modern architecture. A lover of Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion, he was a man deeply moved by his Christian faith to pursue truth, goodness, and beauty.  

Irwin Miller knew that leaders had to be on-going creators of the world because institutions are time-bound. When I knew him in the 1980s he had become an advisor on seminary leadership and governance to Lilly Endowment, a family foundation committed to strengthening Christian seminaries, Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Christian. He understood the challenges facing Christianity and recognized seminaries as sources of renewal. 

Looking back on his advice now, I think that Miller underestimated the anchoring role that Tradition must be given for renewed and reorganized religious institutions to remain faithful. The language of “transformative” change in church-related organizations is dangerous. Only by drawing on Tradition can we in the Church reorganize to prepare and nourish the faithful in their vocations.  

An even greater father in the faith, Jaroslav Pelikan, historian of doctrine and convert from Lutheranism to Eastern Orthodoxy, liked to call Tradition “the living faith of the dead,” but he also warned about being stuck in time when he said that “traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.”  

Consider, though, a few of the many recent examples of anchored reorganization at all levels of Catholicism: Pastores Dabo Vobis and the “4 pillars” that shaped your own formation;  world youth days;  the new translation of the Mass; new religious orders and institutes; the founding of this Theological Institute of the New Evangelization; the retirement of Pope Benedict; financial reform at the Vatican; the Year of Mercy; diocesan codes of conduct for clergy and lay personnel; the yoking of parishes; even the two-staged move of the Theological Institute to the Pastoral Center in Braintree. In this 500^thyear of the Protestant Reformation, we can be proud of ongoing, anchored organizational renewal among Catholics.

As on-going co-creators in the Catholic Church, how will you be part of this? What skills and virtues are needed?  

Not omniscience, mind you. You are not God; you will make mistakes. You cannot surmise all the unintended consequences of your proposed improvements, even when you map out possible scenarios. Therefore, check your pride. Only in this way will you learn. And, as I learned, the more people we supervise, the more frequently we will need the confessional. Also, the more strategic thinking we engage in, the more teamwork and continuing adjustments in the plan are required. Checked pride is conducive to growth in the virtue of prudence.

But that is not to say that we avoid conflict at all costs. Several years ago my seven year old granddaughter Madeleine tried to squelch conflict among cousins with rules she wrote for a new club housed in a new tent on our back porch. Her ten rules were mostly directed at her little brother—no messes, no fighting, no yelling. But the 10^thand last rule was prescient:  “Don’t hate the leader.”  

Stanley Hauerwas is a name some of you will recognize. He is a retired professor of Christian ethics (Protestant language for Moral Theology) at Duke University. Stanley is brashly wise. He is known for saying  “yes, you must love your enemies, but you must first have the courage to make some.” Fortitude, along with prudence, is essential in leading change.  We cannot expect or need everyone to like us for the changes we make. 

For example, sometimes, one cannot wait for the retirements of difficult personnel. They may be hurting others and obstructing the renewal of the institution. Or, consider the gung ho catechetics volunteer marching to the tune of her own drummer, ignoring the elements of the Faith that are more challenging both to teach and to learn. She deprives her students of the fullness of the Faith. To know Jesus more is to love him more. Accountability requires that we hold the people we oversee accountable. 

Be humble when you take courageous action. Remember that the most bothersome failures in others are often the ones we struggle to correct in ourselves. Most proposed change can be adapted without severe loss. Prudence will grow as you listen and learn. Aside from a confessor, you need at least one good friend, who, as Msgr. Moroney, quoting Oscar Wilde, likes to tell seminarians, will “stab you in the front.”  

Finally, remember that our efforts are at best are provisional. Just because we have a greater sense for the Reality beyond full knowing does not mean that we automatically recognize the limitations in our own efforts to save the world. We do not look to excellent programs for our salvation. We look to the Resurrection and the Life promised by Christ Jesus. Take as your image of hope the blast of joy that comes at that moment in the Easter Vigil when the lights come up, bells begin pealing and the first Mass of Easter is launched.  We are blessed to engage in provisional organizational efforts that intend to nourish the faithful.  But Jesus alone can accomplish their perfect nourishment and invites us all into His perfect joy.  

You have been loved here. Please love and support this institution that has nourished you. And may you be blessed with God’s love sufficiently to love your calling, the people you serve and the institutions hosting that service. Thank you.

Odds and Ends from the Past Week....

Valentine Nworah and Stanislaus Achu are pictured here with my good friend Archbishop Terrance Prendergast, SJ, who generously welcomed them to his residence in Ottawa while they were awaiting renewal of their visas. Archbishop Prendergast is a great scripture scholar, and I can’t wait until you enjoy him as a retreat director later this year!

Pope Francis was in Genoa this week, where he spoke to 3,500 industrial workers, many in uniforms or hard hats. He told them "without work for everyone, there will not be dignity for anyone.”

Master photographer George Martell caught several great candid shots from the Theological Institute Commencement the other day, including this one of the President of the Theological Institute deep in thought.

We were checking just in case you had sent us a text!

I am still grateful for my old friend, Dr. Christa Klein, whose Commencement Address was so well received by our graduates and their families and friends.

Theological Institute Commencement 2017

Last week we celebrated the Commencement of seventeen graduates of our Theological Institute. Cardinal O’Malley and the Faculty of the Institute joined me in in awarding two degrees: Masters in Ministry and Masters in Theological Studies. 

Leslie Buffo, Christine Coffey Donahue, Joe Jorge, Julie Kiricoples, Brother John McCabe, Sarah Melendez, Pat Morrissey, Deacon Tom O'Shea, Rosanna Pacitti, Judy Riopelle, Diane Sarault, Pat Szczebak, and Deacon Tom Walsh earned a Master of Arts in Ministry, while Chris Carmody, Eric Landers, Melissa LaNeve, Daniel Mainardi, and Will Rein earned a Master of Theological Studies.

The commencement address was given by Christa Klein, former president of the In Trust Center for Theological Schools and one of our own trustees. Dr. Klein urged the graduates to use their newly acquired knowledge as an ”instrument of hearing…respecting the needs of others and discovering how [you] can, in mind and heart, know the love of Christ.”

Eric Landers spoke on behalf of the graduates, recalling, ”We've taken precious time away from our families, from our home lives, from our work lives…so that the Lord might fully reveal himself."

Congratulations to our newest graduates! May God grant them a restful summer! They should be proud of the good work they have accomplished in service to Christ and to his Church!

Memorial Day at Evergreen Cemetery

It was an honor this morning, despite the rain, to gather with my fellow citizens of Brighton in prayers for our beloved dead this Memorial Day at Evergreen Cemetery.  My thanks to Ann Larosee and her family and friends for making this all possible!  Here is the brief reflection I offered:

In the upper room, the night before he died, Jesus took bread and wine, and gave us his Body and Blood, and then turned to them and said five words.  Five words which echo through the years and are heard between the pines and the rain of this memorial day morning: "Do this in memory of me."

He is calling us to remember:

To remember his life-giving cross and the hope of the Resurrection;

To remember all who have loved us, and especially those whom we commend today to his loving embrace;

To remember the men and women who gave the last full measure of devotion to a country founded on the God-given liberty of its citizens;

To remember the Brighton farmer who once picked up his musket to defend his family and consecrate the ground of a new nation with his blood;

To remember the young son of Brighton who died in a battlefield far from home that his nation might be safe from fascist tyrannies across two great oceans;

To remember the young people of our community who still lay down their lives at our service across the globe.

We remember them, and we beg God to reward their for their heroism, their self-sacrifice and their love of us and our country and all for which it stands.

Just as we beg God to lead gently home to himself all who have died, and especially those buried in this place and especially those whose memory still aches  in our hearts.

Forgive their sins, O Lord, and lead them home to a place of eternal refreshment, light and peace. And help us never to forget: the love, the sacrifice and lives who have touched us, who give us courage and who have made us who we are.

Three New Deacons for Fall River

Three of Saint John's own seminarians were ordained to the diaconate yesterday by Bishop Edgar M. da Cunha, S.D.V. at St. Mary of the Assumption Cathedral in Fall River.  Congratulations to Deacons Matt Gill, Huan Muñoz and Dan Nunes!

Deacon Nunes, Bishop da Cunha, Deacon Gill and Deacon Muñoz

"Do you resolve to discharge the office of Deacon with humble charity in order to assist the priestly Order and to benefit the Christian people?"

"Send forth upon them, Lord, we pray, the Holy Spirit,
that they may be strengthened
by the gift of your sevenfold grace for the faithful carrying out
of the work of the ministry."

Prayer of Ordination of a Priest

As so many of us take part in Ordinations to the Priesthood these days, we are presented a wonderful opportunity to listen carefully to the Prayer of Ordination which the Bishop prays over the ordinand after the imposition of hands.  The prayer offers a wonderful summary of who this new Priest is and what he will do.  This reflection on the Prayer of Ordination is largely taken from my book, The Mass Explained (Catholic Book, 2009).

The Prayer of Ordination is based largely upon one found in the Gelasian Sacramentary and may well date to sometime in the late fifth century.  The prayer begins with a sense of urgency:

Draw near, O Lord, holy Father,

almighty and eternal God,

author of human dignity:

it is you who apportion all graces.

through you everything progresses;

through you all things are made to stand firm.  

Adesto (Draw near!) is an unusual word in Roman Catholic euchology.  It is used only when the Church wants God to change something: Draw near and change this oil into Sacred Chrism, this bread and wine into the Body and Blood of your Son, this man into a Priest!

We beg God with such urgency to draw near precisely because we know he can change things.  He is the creator: almighty and eternal.  God our Father is the one who apportions all graces: nothing has meaning or value without him.  It is only through him that things get better and only through him that things can remain the same, for he “fills the earth with goodness,” and it is “by the Lord's word the heavens were made…” (Psalm 32: 5, 6)

Thus he is the author of human dignity.  He caused us to be made in his own image and likeness and has made us “a little less than the angels.” (Hebrews 2:7)

To form a priestly people 

you appoint ministers of Christ your Son

by the power of the Holy Spirit, 

arranging them in different orders.

After the opening of the prayer establishes God’s power, the next paragraph describes what he has done in the past.  He formed a Priestly People.  This early reference to the “common priesthood” is important.  For no ecclesial ministry is ever a good in itself.  Rather, God appoints ministers for the sustenance and support of a priestly people. (Revelation 1:6)

This was the problem Saint Paul had with the Corinthians and charismatic gifts.  As individuals bragged that they had a better gift than anyone else, Paul admonishes them that unless the gift is for the up building of the Church, it has no value. (1 Corinthians 14)

So, it is for the sake of this priestly people that God appoints ministers of Christ his Son. He arranges them in different orders (different gifts) by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Cf. Romand 15:14)  Saint Paul, once again, struggles with the primordial challenge of ministry referenced here.  As soon as God creates different orders, rivalries and resentments grow up.  He responds, like this prayer, by reminding us that there are many gifts, but the same spirit, and that all the gifts are equal: each given for the building up of the Body of Christ.

Even in our own day, the battles over the ordination of women are born of the idea that ordained ministry is the “better” part, and by not ordaining women they have been relegated to a second class.  As the prayer suggests, however, these “different orders” are the will of God and are created by the Holy Spirit who “produces all of these, distributing them individually to each person as he wishes.” (1 Corinthians 12:11)

God is the source of all ministries, for he is the author of the priestly people whom they are made to serve.

Already in the earlier covenant

there grew up offices, established through mystical rites:

when you set Moses and Aaron over your people

to govern and sanctify them,

you chose men next in rank and dignity

to accompany them and assist them in their task.

Now begins a description of how God created precursors to the ministry of Priest in the Old Testament.  In both instances, these offices were established to choose helpers (“men next in rank and dignity”) to assist Moses and Aaron

Both precursing ministries were established by “mystical rites,” (sacramentis mysticis).  These rites, however, are, as the Fathers of the Church would insist, mere shadows of the Sacraments of the New Covenant in Christ’s Blood.  Nonetheless, they are willed by God for the care of his people and, in some way reflect the rites of the heavenly liturgy, somehow shared with Israel in the tabernacle. (Cf. Exodus 25-30) As such, these rites are “mystical,” characterized by mystery and awe. 

The first type of the Priesthood is found in the seventy wise men who were given a part of the spirit of Moses to help rule the people.

So too in the desert  

you implanted the spirit of Moses

in the hearts of seventy wise men;

and with their help he ruled your people with greater ease.

The story comes from Numbers 11: 10-17, 24-30.  Moses is beside himself with the demands of the Israelites in the desert.  He hears “family after family, crying at the entrance of their tents…” How many times does the parish priest feel the same way?  But what does he do?  Does he withdraw from God, pouting like a petulant child?  Or does he go to God in prayer with the confidence and the intimacy of Moses?

"Why do you treat your servant so badly?" Moses asked the LORD. "Why are you so displeased with me that you burden me with all this people? Was it I who conceived all this people? or was it I who gave them birth, that you tell me to carry them at my bosom, like a foster father carrying an infant, to the land you have promised under oath to their fathers? Where can I get meat to give to all this people? For they are crying to me, 'Give us meat for our food.' I cannot carry all this people by myself, for they are too heavy for me. If this is the way you will deal with me, then please do me the favor of killing me at once, so that I need no longer face this distress."

Often, priests like spouses, are afraid they can only bring good news to their most beloved.  But like the father of the prodigal, God our Father is ever waiting for is to pour out our hearts to him.  Christ, who became like us in all things but sin, knows the fear and trembling, the ache and the agony of the human heart.  Christ, who chose you, Father, to share in his Priesthood, wants you to succeed.  And so, God waits for us.

Some problems can only be solved by God and the solution God has for Moses is to give him some helpers.

Then the LORD said to Moses, "Assemble for me seventy of the elders of Israel, men you know for true elders and authorities among the people, and bring them to the meeting tent. When they are in place beside you, I will come down and speak with you there. I will also take some of the spirit that is on you and will bestow it on them, that they may share the burden of the people with you. You will then not have to bear it by yourself. 

So Moses went out and told the people what the LORD had said. Gathering seventy elders of the people, he had them stand around the tent. The LORD then came down in the cloud and spoke to him. Taking some of the spirit that was on Moses, he bestowed it on the seventy elders; and as the spirit came to rest on them, they prophesied. 

Sometimes when we refuse to bring our deepest pains to God, the devil plants a sneaking suspicion in our minds that God won’t or can’t do anything about it.  We are tempted to believe that the one who made us, loved us, and chose us doesn’t or can’t care enough to help us.

Yet Moses’ agony in the desert with his ungovernable people concludes with a final lesson in the omnipotence of God.  For two of the seventy never showed up for the ordination at the tabernacle.

Now two men, one named Eldad and the other Medad, were not in the gathering but had been left in the camp. They too had been on the list, but had not gone out to the tent; yet the spirit came to rest on them also, and they prophesied in the camp. So, when a young man quickly told Moses, "Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp," Joshua, son of Nun, who from his youth had been Moses' aide, said, "Moses, my lord, stop them." But Moses answered him, "Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the people of the LORD were prophets! Would that the LORD might bestow his spirit on them all!" Then Moses retired to the camp, along with the elders of Israel. 

Moses sounds tired at the end of a very long day.  But he knew that God could do anything he wanted, even to the point of ordaining the ones who were late for their own ordination!

The second type provided for the Priesthood is in the sons of Aaron, whose ordination is found in Numbers 3:2-3:  “The sons of Aaron were Nadab his first-born, Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar.  These are the names of the sons of Aaron, the anointed priests who were ordained to exercise the priesthood.”

So also upon the sons of Aaron

you poured an abundant share of their father's plenty,

that the number of the priests prescribed by the Law

might be sufficient for the sacrifices of the tabernacle,

which were a shadow of the good things to come. 

If the seventy helpers to Moses were ordained for governance, the three sons of Aaron were to assure that the sacrifices of the Tabernacle would be offered.  Quoting from Hebrews 10:1, the final line of this strophe, describes the sacrifices of the tabernacle as shadows of the Sacraments of the New Covenant, “the good things to come.”

It is important to note that in both instances, these prefiguring shadows of the priesthood concern the appointment of helpers to Moses and Aaron, just as the priest is a helper to the Bishop.  In addition, neither of the types possesses the role of the other.  The seventy share in the munera of governance, while the sons of Aaron share in the sanctification of the tabernacle and prophesying.

The Priest of the New Covenant, however, shares in the Priesthood of Jesus Christ, who is our one High Priest: the chief shepherd, teacher, and sanctifier.  These mystical sacraments are an incomplete shadow of the true sacraments of the New Covenant.

But in these last days, holy Father, 

you sent your Son into the world, 

Jesus, who is Apostle and High Priest of our confession. 

Through the Holy Spirit

he offered himself to you as a spotless victim;

and he made his Apostles, consecrated in the truth, 

sharers in his mission. 

You provided them also with companions

to proclaim and carry out the work of salvation

throughout the whole world.

The shadows of the Old Testament are fulfilled by the coming of the Messiah (cf. John 17:18) in these last days, (2 Timothy 3: 1-5) the fullness of time. Christ is the Apostle and High Priest of our confession. (Hebrews 3: 1-6)  Moses and his sons shared one of the three munera of a priest: they governed God’s people for him.  Aaron and his sons shared two of the munera: they offered sacrifice and prophesied.  In Jesus, however, the fullness of the High priesthood resides: he possesses the triplex munera: to teach, to sanctify and to govern.

He offered himself to the Father as a spotless victim through the Holy Spirit.  He is not only the priest, but the sacrifice, the giver and the gift.

Christ establishes the Apostolic priesthood to which he ordains his Apostles. (cf. Hebrews 3:14)  The Father then provides companions to proclaim and carry out the great work of salvation throughout the world.  In his homily, the Bishop expands on this notion:

For Christ was sent by the Father and he in turn sent the Apostles into the world, so that through them and their successors, the Bishops, he might continue to exercise his office of Teacher, Priest, and Shepherd. Indeed, priests are established co-workers of the Order of Bishops, with whom they are joined in the priestly office and with whom they are called to the service of the people of God. (From the Homily from the Ordination of Priests)

And now we beseech you, Lord, in our weakness, 

to grant us these helpers that we need

to exercise the priesthood that comes from the Apostles.

Just as Moses and Aaron were given helpers by God, so the successor of the Apostles now ordaining asks that these helpers: be given a share in “the Priesthood that comes from the Apostles.”

The Bishop stands before God, like Moses, because he cannot possibly govern the people of this diocese alone.  He stands weak like Aaron, because he cannot possibly offer all these sacrifices in his diocese alone.  So, like Moses going to God, he says: ‘I cannot carry all this people by myself, for they are too heavy for me.”  The Bishop goes to God in his weakness and asks him, “grant us these helpers that we need!”

Then the Bishop comes to the heart of the prayer:

Almighty Father,

Grant to these servants of yours

the dignity of the priesthood. 

Renew within them the Spirit of holiness.

As a co-worker with the order of bishops

may they be faithful to the ministry

that they receive from you, Lord God,

and be to other a model of right conduct.

May they be worthy coworkers with our Order,

so that by their preaching

and through the grace of the Holy Spirit

the words of the Gospel may bear fruit in human hearts

and reach even to the ends of the earth.

This section is, in fact, a summary of the entire rest of the Prayer of Ordination.  God is addressed as the Almighty Father, who is asked to grant “the dignity of the priesthood to these servants of yours.”  A remarkable intimacy is here implied between God, the Bishop, and the newly ordained priest.  These newly ordained priests are presumed by this prayer to be God’s servants already.  What they will now become is “co-workers with our order.”  By the use of the phrase “our order” the Bishop not only describes the relationship between the priest and God, but establishes a new relationship in Christ between himself the man to be ordained.

The Bishop asks God for four things: that God bestow the dignity of the priesthood upon the ordinandi, that he renew within him the spirit of holiness, that he grant him fidelity in his new ministry, and that the new priest be a model of right conduct.

Saint Paul writes to the young Bishop Timothy about the importance of the ordained serving as a model of right conduct. (1 Timothy 1: 2-14)  The Apostle to the Gentiles recalls how he “was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and an arrogant man,” but now, having experienced God’s mercy, God’s grace and the faith and love found in Christ Jesus empower him to live a virtuous life.  So too, the newly ordained will have to rely on the grace which comes from Christ to conform himself to the Lord’s faith and love that the holiness of his life to be “a delightful fragrance to Christ's faithful.” (Homily from the Ordination of Priests)

The Bishop then asks that the new priest share in his ministry of sanctification.

Together with us,

may they be faithful stewards of your mysteries,

so that your people may be renewed in the waters of rebirth

and nourished from your altar;

so that sinners may be reconciled

and the sick raised up.

Just as God the Creator of the world dispenses all good things, so the priest dispenses the sacraments which care for the Church. Here the Bishop asks that they, joined to him, be given the power to celebrate the Sacraments.  The sacraments listed are Baptism (your people…renewed in the waters of rebirth), Eucharist (nourished from your altar), Penance (sinners may be reconciled), and Anointing (the sick raised up).  Confirmation and Holy Orders are not listed as primarily Episcopal sacraments.  Marriage is omitted, as well since the couple confect the Sacrament which the priest witnesses.  The same list of four sacraments is found in the homily for ordination to the priesthood.

Finally, the Bishop prays that the newly ordained, joined with him, to intercede for “the people entrusted to his care” and all the world.

May they be joined with us, Lord,

in imploring your mercy

for the people entrusted to their care

and for all the world.

An essential part of the priest’s ministry of sanctification is interceding for the “the people entrusted to his care and for all the world.  Indeed, one of the questions he is asked before his ordination is whether he is resolved “to implore with us God's mercy upon the people entrusted to your care by observing the command to pray without ceasing?” (From Promises to the Elect, Ordination of Priests)

Like Christ the High Priest, the newly ordained is called upon to ever intercede for his people. (Hebrews 7: 24-25) So important is this obligation that in the former covenant the priest Samuel saw the failure to pray for the people as a sin. (1 Samuel 12: 23) Nor should the priest, as father and shepherd, forget the example of Job, who after his sons and daughters had returned from a night of revelry would rise early in the morning and “sacrifice a burnt offering for each of them, thinking, ‘Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.’” (Job 1: 4-5)

Finally, it is important to note that this intercession is always carried out in union with the Bishop.  For it is only in union with the Bishop that the priest may carry out his ministry of priestly sanctification.  On a practical note, the Bishop himself bears a special responsibility to see that the priest is not so burdened by other tasks that he is unable to make intercession for those under his care.  In a general audience address, Pope John Paul II reminded the entire Church that such intercession is the priest’s privilege and responsibility, “for he has been ordained to represent his people before the Lord and to intercede on their behalf before the throne of grace. (cf. General Audience, 2 June 1993, no. 5)

The prayer comes to a conclusion by envisioning the final act of Christ the High Priest at the end of time: the offering of God’s people to the Father on the last day.

  

And so may the full number of the nations, 

gathered together in Christ,

be transformed into your one people

and made perfect in your Kingdom.

The prayer is inspired by the heavenly vision of Revelation 7: 13-17:

Then one of the elders spoke up and said to me, "Who are these wearing white robes, and where did they come from?" I said to him, "My lord, you are the one who knows." He said to me, "These are the ones who have survived the time of great distress; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. "For this reason they stand before God's throne and worship him day and night in his temple. The one who sits on the throne will shelter them. They will not hunger or thirst anymore, nor will the sun or any heat strike them. For the Lamb who is in the center of the throne will shepherd them and lead them to springs of life-giving water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes." 

Every priestly act, then, is a participation in the great work of Christ the High Priest to make all things one in himself in the fullness of time. (cf. Ephesians 1: 9-10)  Whether in her ecumenical work or in the reconciliation of parish groups or family members, the Church constantly seeks “to gather all people and all things into Christ, so as to be for all an 'inseparable sacrament of unity”  The Priest, then, acts in the person of Christ, ever seeking “to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.” (John 11: 51-52)

The priestly work of the pastor is so often like that described by the Prophet Ezekiel, who through the breaking and rejoining o two sticks “expressed the divine will to ‘gather from all sides’ the members of his scattered people.” (Ezekiel 37: 16-28)

This is also why the Priest imitates Christ the Good Shepherd “who came not to be served but to serve, and who came to seek out and save what was lost.” (Homily, from the Ordination of a Priest)

Then follows the concluding doxology:

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,

who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

God forever and ever.