“At Mass or the Lord's Supper,” the General Instruction of the Roman Missal tells us, “the people of God are called together into unity, with a priest presiding and acting in the person of Christ, to celebrate the memorial of the Lord or Eucharistic sacrifice…” (GIRM, no. 27)Now, most of the people coming to Mass, including present company, think it was their idea to come to Mass, not God’s. You did, after all, set your alarm last night and you chose to show up, least the Rector be scandalized by your absence.
Well, I suppose there’s a bit of devotion in there, too. You have grown to know that without this daily bread our lives are empty and that at this Altar we find the source and summit of everything worthwhile. So that’s why you chose to go to Mass.
But that’s still not what the General Instruction says….it says that you have been “called together into unity” by Christ, who formed you into a holy people, a royal priesthood, Christ’s own mystical body.” It was not we who chose him, but he who chose us. (John 15: 16)
In a few weeks you will hear the same thing in the Prayer of Ordination, when the Bishop recalls how God “chose men next in rank and dignity [to Moses and Aaron] to accompany them and assist them in their task.” Just as you will hear the Bishop say these blessed words: “Relying on the help of Our Lord God and our Savior Jesus Christ, we choose these, our brothers, for the Order of the Priesthood.”
And all those years you thought you were discerning whether you wanted to be a Priest, whether you would be happy as a Priest. But the truth is, all you and I have been trying to figure out is whether God had called you to be a Priest. For we do not choose him. He chooses us, to go out and bear much fruit and to love one another as he has loved us.
