This was my homily at Deacon House this morning.
I often refer (ad nauseum, some might suggest) to that great big castle on Lake Street as our holy house. And it is. Sanctified by the prayers and the sacrifices and the lives of the extraordinary men whom God has raised up to be his Priests for more than a century. And even today, he is working miracles in their hearts, purifying and transforming them into vessels through which he has quenched the thirst for holiness of untold tens of thousands.
And so too, this too is a holy house where for 104 years priests with the names like Lenahan and Murphy and Fitzgerald, and even, known to many of you, a young Father John MacInnis in his first assignment, lived and prayed and worked to shepherd God’s people on Oak Square under the patronage of Our Lady of the Presentation.
Perhaps late at night you can still hear their fervent prayers or the sound of hearts straining to do God’s will and to love the people whom he had sent them.
And now your shepherd’s hearts are joined to theirs. Trying to prepare serve a people who will call you Father. Whose children you will baptize, whose parents you will bury, whose tears you will dry, whose sick you will anoint. You will feed them with the bread of angels, and preach the good news to their hearts that they might rejoice that God has loved them and worship the one true God in holiness and truth.
And this is the holy house in which you will prepare to meet them. This place where, with the Lord, you will spend the night in prayer. This is the house where he gathers his disciples before he sends them out into the world. This is the place where he teaches you how to preach and to heal, to cast out and to loose.
And it is from this holy house that power will come forth to renew the face of the earth.
