Homily for Chrism Mass
March 22, 2016
Readings:
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| Photo by Juan Guajardo / NTC |
Luke 4:16-21
In our celebration of this Chrism Mass today, after this homily, I will ask you my brother priests (and myself) to renew the promises that we made on the occasion of our ordinations.
En unos minutos vamos a renovar las promesas de nuestra ordenacion. Esta renovacion hace presente otra vez la realidad de nuestra participacion en el sacerdocio de Cristo. Somos ungidos con la uncion de Cristo, revelado en el Evangelio de nuestra Misa y en la profesia de Isaias.
For many of us, including me, we made those promises and received our anointing in this Cathedral of St. Patrick. Thus, there might be a temptation for us to become lost in nostalgia, or perhaps experience a sense of melancholy as we remember friends present on that day that have since passed on. We might remember the idealism of our youth that gradually gave way to the reality of our vocation as lived faithfully with God’s assistance and help. We might pause and consider the expectations that each of us had regarding priesthood or the nature and life of the Church, both universal and local, and how these expectations were not met by reality but instead by the Lord’s Providence.
Yet, the renewal of our promises is never an act of nostalgia. It is an act of the present moment that reminds us of the perpetual gift of Christ’s sacramental priesthood to us and through us. To emphasize this, at the Last Supper, where Christ instituted the Eucharist and for its sake, the priesthood, on the eve of His Passion, Jesus prayed for His disciples gathered about Him. At the same time he looked ahead to the community of disciples of all centuries. In his prayer for the disciples of all time, He saw each of us too, and He prayed for each one of us by name. What He asks for the disciples gathered around Him He also asks for us, His priests gathered here today: “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, so that they also may be consecrated in truth” (17:17ff.). The Lord asks for our sanctification, our consecration in truth. He sends us forth to carry on his own mission.” Jesus prays for us.
Escuchemos lo que pide para los Doce y para los que estamos aquí reunidos: «Santifícalos en la verdad: tu palabra es verdad. Como tú me enviaste al mundo, así los envío yo también al mundo. Y por ellos me consagro yo, para que también se consagren ellos en la verdad» (17,17ss). El Señor pide nuestra santificación, nuestra consagración en la verdad. Y nos envía para continuar su misma misión.
Our readings today speak of anointing and witness of and by Christ. The sanctification for which He prayed and the mission that He shares with us is accomplished through this anointing. Both belong to Christ. Because of our anointing we belong to Christ, even more than to ourselves. The anointing is more than a sign; it is a symbol. The anointing seeps into our very being; it changes us— ontologically, as the scholastic taught. We become one with Christ through it to such an extent that our priestly identity includes but is beyond that which we do in our ministry. Our ministry—our homilies and the way we preach, the reverence and attentiveness by which we celebrate the Eucharist, our compassionate encouragement offered with absolution in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, the solace and healing that we offer in the Anointing of the Sick, the paternal reception and witness of marital vows, and our ministry of teaching and our approachability — do not establish our priestly identity—rather, they manifest Christ, the Head and Shepherd of His Church. They should always show to the Church and to us what Christ has initiated as the Alpha and the Omega.
This symbolic reality challenges us not to take for granted the anointing that we have received from Christ. When we take it for granted, as the Nazarenes took Christ for granted, we can simply celebrate the Sacraments in a minimalist and functional manner—as if our priestly anointing received from Christ is something that we can merely wipe away from the surface of our lives—reapplying it in accord with our own preferences. This symbolic reality also enables us to avoid a minimalist celebration of the Sacraments, especially the celebration of the Eucharist—which the needs of God’s people require us to celebrate more frequently than might be the norm in other places. Yet, Christ has called us and sent us on mission to serve here in the Diocese of Fort Worth and He will not abandon us in His mission entrusted to us.
El simbolismo de la unción crismal nos apoya celebrar los sacramentos en un segundo idioma también. Nuestro ministerio es una respuesta y a la misma vez una gracia y don de Cristo a nosotros y a la Iglesia, especialmente aquí en la Diocesis de Fort Worth. Es Su mission primeramente y es nuestra misión por Su permiso.
The Grace of this anointing prevents us from making Christ’s mission subordinate to our own desires and plans. This challenge is most clearly experienced in the manner in which we administer the Sacraments and in the style and substance of our preaching. Here are some points for our examination: When we celebrate the Eucharist, does our manner draw more attention to ourselves or to Christ? When we preach, does our style and substance make known the mystery of the Gospel, or does it thrust upon the people the riddle of our own frivolous self-absorption? As Pope Benedict XVI spoke to his priests of Rome in 2009, “All our preaching must measure itself against the saying of Jesus Christ: “My teaching is not mine” (Jn 7:16). We preach not private theories and opinions, but the faith of the Church, whose servants we are.”
As Saint Augustine wrote, “If we do not preach ourselves, and if we are inwardly so completely one with Him who called us to be His ambassadors, that we are shaped by faith and live it, then our preaching will be credible. I do not seek to win people for myself, but I give myself.”
No me pertenezco y llego a ser yo mismo precisamente por el hecho de que voy más allá de mí mismo y, mediante la superación de mí mismo, consigo insertarme en Cristo y en su cuerpo, que es la Iglesia. Si no nos anunciamos a nosotros mismos e interiormente hemos llegado a ser uno con aquél que nos ha llamado como mensajeros suyos, de manera que estamos modelados por la fe y la vivimos, entonces nuestra predicación será creíble.
With the anointing and mission that Christ has shared with us, He offers to us His priests the possibility of ongoing and intimate conversation. The conversation of prayer is what reminds each of us that we belong to Him. Prayer is what reminds us that our ministry is not ours but His. Prayer is what reminds us that the Gospel is His teaching not mine and that I can teach it as something that has claimed me instead of something that I have claimed. I can also hold opinions and intellectual theories that at a superficial glance sound like the Gospel, but without prayer and the humility that comes from prayer, such preaching can still be more about myself than about the authentic teaching of Christ and His Church—of which we are always first and foremost students who need to learn more from the Master. For Christ loves us, He has prayed for us, and has touched our hearts by calling us to serve His people as His priests. We see this exemplified in our priestly patron, St. John Vianney. He was not scholar or an intellectual. He is not honored for his ignorance or for his inability to learn in the usual way. He is honored for his sanctity. His preaching touched people’s hearts because his own heart had been first touched by Jesus Christ.
Finally, we renew our promises in the midst of the celebration of the Chrism Mass in which the oils with which God’s people are to be anointed will be consecrated and blessed. It is in this light that we recognize that the anointing that we have received as priests from Christ is part of our experience as a baptized and fully initiated member of the Church. It is an ecclesial reality. As Pope Francis reminds us, “The ecclesial dynamism of the call is an antidote to indifference and to individualism. It establishes the communion in which indifference is vanquished by love, because it demands that we go beyond ourselves and place our lives at the service of God’s plan, embracing the historical circumstances of his holy people.”
