This is the homily I preached at Saint Patrick's Church in Hampton Beach this weekend.
It’s a terrible thing, betrayal. A father who betrays a son, a daughter who betrays her mother, an uncle who abuses his nephew, a brother who steals from his sibling, a friend who betrays an old friend, but most of all, a priest, who steals, abuses or lies.
Woe to such shepherds, Jeremiah declares. Woe to the shepherds “who mislead and scatter the flock,” says the LORD. The ones who scattered rather than gathered, who neglect rather than love, they will be punished for their evil deeds.
And while it is true that the vast majority of cases of the abuse of children by Catholic Priests took place decades ago, even one child harmed long time ago is a crime that cries to heaven.
Which is one of the big reasons why I do what I do for a living. I’m Monsignor Jim Moroney, the Rector of Saint John’s Seminary in Boston, the oldest and largest seminary in New England. Since 1884 we have prepared more than 3500 priests for service in New England and throughout the world. And if you want to know who is supposed to assure that we will have shepherds for the future who will gather rather than scatter, who will increase and multiply, rather than drive the flock away…well, that’s us.
Pope Saint John Paul II gave us the best advice on how to accomplish that task when he told wrote that Priests should be a bridge to Christ and not an obstacle. By the way they speak, by the way they live they should draw us to Christ.
For the Priest should be like John the Baptist, ever seeking to decrease that Christ might increase in the lives of everyone he meets. Indeed, his whole like should be one constant declaration, pointing to that Cross and saying: “Behold the Lamb of God! Behold him who has come into the world!”
That means that a Seminary must be devoted not just to the Spiritual, the Intellectual and the Pastoral dimensions of a young shepherd’s life, but to the human parts of him as well.
With the aid of psychologists and spiritual directors, formators and veteran pastors, we seek to lead a man to understand who he is, how he feels and thinks and understands the world around him. We seek to help him to let go of those tendencies and neuroses which would drive people away, and to foster and encourage those natural talents which would draw all men and women to Christ.
Sometimes that means that the seminarian must undergo an agonizing re-examination of his motives and patterns of behavior in order to eliminate from his daily life those tendencies which would alienate or manipulate others.
The most extreme example of such behaviors are those psycho-sexual sicknesses which lead people to act out in all kinds of inappropriate ways that violate the dignity of another person and are rooted in anything but truth, purity and love. For, as Pope Saint John Paul II said so clearly, there is no place in the Priesthood for those who would harm a child.
For the Priest is called to act in the very person of Christ, must be conformed, mind, body and soul, to the the incarnate love of the man who hangs upon that Cross. The priest should be the one to whom you can always turn, who will always listen, who will struggle to understand, and who, like the Good Shepherd, is willing to lay down his life for his flock.
The priest is the one who leads us to verdant pastures and restful waters, where resting in Christ’s unconditional love, our souls are refreshed and we realize that with Christ’s love for us, we have nothing to fear, nothing to really worry about ever again. He is the epitomy of kindness and the one I can always trust.
The Priest is the one who I must always be able to trust, the one who guides me along the right paths, even through the dark valleys, ever reassuring me that Jesus is walking right beside me.
The Priest is the one who feeds me with the very Body and Blood of the Son of God, the Bread of Life and the Cup of Everlasting Salvation, with the assurance that he who eats and drinks of this Sacrament will never really die.
The Priest is the one who baptizes our children and buries our parents with tender love, devotion and piety.
The Priest is the one who anoints us when we are sick and absolves us when we sin. And always, through his hands and his words, it is Christ who acts: baptizing, confirming, anointing and consecrating. It may sound like Father’s voice, but it is Jesus speaking; and it may look like his hands extended as he prays, but it is really Christ’s arms, extended on the Cross in an everlasting Sacrifice.
The Priest is the man, like the Lord in whose Priesthood he shares, whose heart is moved with pity and who has chosen to renounce fame and family and fortunate in order to kneel before the Bishop and promise to him and to his successors as Chief Shepherds of the Church both obedience and respect.
So wherever the Bishop tells him to go, he goes. Whatever the Bishop asks him to do, he does it; all because he has learned that a life of goodness and kindness, true happiness is never found in grasping for what you can get, but in opening your arms on a Cross and offering all to God in service to his Holy Church. His one aspiration and only hope is to dwell in the house of the Lord for all his days.
And while such shepherds will sometimes fail and fall, the more than a hundred men who will return to Saint John’s Seminary at the end of August seek only to discern God's will for their lives and then do it.
Pray for them. Beg God to send his Spirit deep within their hearts. And, once and a while, pray for those of us who have been given the enormous privilege of forming Priests in service to the coming generations in Manchester and all the other Dioceses, forming shepherds after Christ's own heart.
