Each year we welcome bus loads of fifth graders to visit this Holy House. And each year I introduce myself as the pastor of this Church and begin by asking them what do we do here? Some answer that we are a school where nobody goes home while others look around and see the resemblance to Hogwarth’s. But the most prescient young men always say the same thing: This is where they make priests.
And, of course, they are right. This is where God makes priests; where he forms them into the image of Jesus his son, forges their heart in the crucible of sacrifice and infuses them with the power to love others as the one on the Cross first loved them.
But Moses tells us even more than the fifth grader about where they first came from in his prescient words recounted in the Book of Deuteronomy:
“A prophet like me will the LORD, your God, raise up for you from among your own kin;”
'…and God will put his own words into the prophet’s mouth; he will tell you all that God commands him.’
And that is what God still does today. He sends us, in the image of his Son....not an angel or a Saint, but a man like us, one of your kin.
One of the most amazing moments in the life of this holy house each year is when at 3pm I enter this chapel to find 22 new men with theirs parents and siblings and friends. The men are universally petrified, and reasonably mortified as their mothers compete to gush over them, each saying to the other, you know my son....
While the fathers look puzzled and the brothers and sisters invent endless ways to tease this guy who thinks that God has been whispering his name. ‘Cause they know him. They know that just like Bishop or me or any of the priests present tonight, he arrives here just as imperfect as any one of you, with few of the skills he will need to answer the call he has heard God whispering to him.
But he trusts in the God whose chooses the weak and makes them strong in Christ. He chooses God’s wisdom over his own foolishness, God’s love over his own selfishness and God’s way over his own wandering path.
It’s not that he’s a saint. But he’s willing to try to become one. Try with his whole heart and mind and soul, placing everything he has and is on that altar to join his life, his sacrifices, with the perfect sacrifice of the Cross.
For he knows that a Priest is defined by what he offers. From time immemorial the priest has done one thing for a living: he offers sacrifice. And “what” he offers is the oblation The oblation might be Cain’s grain or Abel’s fat sheep. It might be the Bread and Wine of Melchisedech or even the first-born son of Abraham.
But all these oblations are a mere shadow, a prefiguring of the perfect sacrifice in which the Christ offers the sacrifice of himself: in which the Great High Priest is and the Victim, the giver and the gift, offers the Paschal sacrifice of himself upon the altar of the Cross.
That’s why the priest forgoes fame or fortune, family or possessions, why he leaves all behind. To follow the Lord to the Cross, where he opens his arms in total self-giving.
But Moses tells us even more than the fifth grader about where they first came from in his prescient words recounted in the Book of Deuteronomy:
“A prophet like me will the LORD, your God, raise up for you from among your own kin;”
'…and God will put his own words into the prophet’s mouth; he will tell you all that God commands him.’
And that is what God still does today. He sends us, in the image of his Son....not an angel or a Saint, but a man like us, one of your kin.
One of the most amazing moments in the life of this holy house each year is when at 3pm I enter this chapel to find 22 new men with theirs parents and siblings and friends. The men are universally petrified, and reasonably mortified as their mothers compete to gush over them, each saying to the other, you know my son....
While the fathers look puzzled and the brothers and sisters invent endless ways to tease this guy who thinks that God has been whispering his name. ‘Cause they know him. They know that just like Bishop or me or any of the priests present tonight, he arrives here just as imperfect as any one of you, with few of the skills he will need to answer the call he has heard God whispering to him.
But he trusts in the God whose chooses the weak and makes them strong in Christ. He chooses God’s wisdom over his own foolishness, God’s love over his own selfishness and God’s way over his own wandering path.
It’s not that he’s a saint. But he’s willing to try to become one. Try with his whole heart and mind and soul, placing everything he has and is on that altar to join his life, his sacrifices, with the perfect sacrifice of the Cross.
For he knows that a Priest is defined by what he offers. From time immemorial the priest has done one thing for a living: he offers sacrifice. And “what” he offers is the oblation The oblation might be Cain’s grain or Abel’s fat sheep. It might be the Bread and Wine of Melchisedech or even the first-born son of Abraham.
But all these oblations are a mere shadow, a prefiguring of the perfect sacrifice in which the Christ offers the sacrifice of himself: in which the Great High Priest is and the Victim, the giver and the gift, offers the Paschal sacrifice of himself upon the altar of the Cross.
That’s why the priest forgoes fame or fortune, family or possessions, why he leaves all behind. To follow the Lord to the Cross, where he opens his arms in total self-giving.
That’s why Father Neururer, a timid priest from a small Austrian farm Baptized that baby. It was forbidden in Dachau, where he was first sent, but even more so in Buchenwald, where he was explicitly forbidden to administer any of the sacraments. But the child had been born in the camp and needed to be baptized before she died and he was a priest. So he baptized her, and was sent to the punishment block, where they hung him by barbed wire, upside down, until he died at the age of 49. Pope John Paul II beautified him twenty years ago
That’s why Father Ganni refused to close his Church in Mosul, despite threats from Islamic extremists. He was just seven years ordained when they stopped his car after Mass and asked him why he did not respond to their threats. He looked the gunmen in the eye and asked them "How can I close the house of God?” So they shot him and tried to burn his body.
That’s why Father Byles refused to get into the lifeboat. He was leading the people from steerage up onto the decks of the Titanic after it hit the iceberg, when, as a survivor later wrote, ‘One sailor,warned the priest of his danger and begged him to board a boat. Father Byles refused [to] leave while even one was left.” Wrote another woman: ”After I got in the boat, which was the last one to leave, and we were slowly going further away from the ship, I could hear distinctly the voice of the priest and the responses to his prayers. Then they became fainter and fainter, until I could only hear the strains of 'Nearer My God, to Thee' and the screams of the people left behind.”
That’s why the priest who first inspired you, probably a lot like Father Kennedy, who died just ten years ago, gets up to pray for the dying man at 2:30 in the morning and why he takes the assignment no one else wants, because that’s what the Church needs him to do. It’s why he gives away his last dollar and last coat to the one who shivers. It’s why he loves them so much that he continues to patiently speak the truth, even while they scream in his face. It’s why he forgoes the world for the Cross. It’s why when others look forward to retirement at the beach, his only ambition is to give his final breath in service to the Lord whom he has promised to love unto death.
And it’s why this holy house, which you support by your love and prayers and generous gifts.....it’s why this house exists.
And it is why we seek to offer the sacrifices of our lives to God through the hands of the priest and why by his hands God transforms bread and wine into the Body and Blood of his Son, the food for our journey to the Cross: every breath offered, every drop poured out. Not for gain or ambition, but for love: pure love, total love, divine love: this is the stuff of Priesthood and the reason for this holy house.
That’s why the priest who first inspired you, probably a lot like Father Kennedy, who died just ten years ago, gets up to pray for the dying man at 2:30 in the morning and why he takes the assignment no one else wants, because that’s what the Church needs him to do. It’s why he gives away his last dollar and last coat to the one who shivers. It’s why he loves them so much that he continues to patiently speak the truth, even while they scream in his face. It’s why he forgoes the world for the Cross. It’s why when others look forward to retirement at the beach, his only ambition is to give his final breath in service to the Lord whom he has promised to love unto death.
And it’s why this holy house, which you support by your love and prayers and generous gifts.....it’s why this house exists.
And it is why we seek to offer the sacrifices of our lives to God through the hands of the priest and why by his hands God transforms bread and wine into the Body and Blood of his Son, the food for our journey to the Cross: every breath offered, every drop poured out. Not for gain or ambition, but for love: pure love, total love, divine love: this is the stuff of Priesthood and the reason for this holy house.
