+ Bishop Michael F. Olson
Homily for Alumni Day of Theological College
Crypt Church of the Basilica of the
National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception
Washington, DC
October 1, 2014
Hebrews 10:12-33
Luke 22:14-23
A Basselin formation can be an inconvenience to ordinary life, or to life in “the workaday world,” as Josef Pieper might have said. Shortly after the completion of my Basselin studies I returned home to Fort Worth and went out for dinner with several friends. The menu read “spaghetti with zesty marinara sauce.” I inquired of the waiter, “There seems to be an ambiguity in the text; what exactly does “zesty” mean? He responded, “Marinara doesn’t have meat in it.” I continued, “Yes, I understand that, but why is it described as ‘zesty’?” The waiter responded, “I don’t know…it’s just a word…you know, ‘zesty’.” Shocked, I moved further into futility, “Has language no meaning to you? It cannot be void of content. What does it disclose?” Silence. “Never mind, I’ll just have the fish.”
It is a challenge to preach a homily on the occasion of Alumni Day because the day can lend itself to nostalgia. Yet, the Word of God and the Liturgy are never about nostalgia – simply a wistful desire to return to what is perceived as a more pleasant place or time. The Word of God and the Liturgy are eternal and they envelop the present moment – the “now” through the living revelation of Scripture and Tradition. Christ calls us to follow ever more deeply into the mystery of our communal life as the Church through the celebration of the Eucharist. It is for the sake of this Mystery that Christ continues to call each of us to the priesthood and to form us partially through the means of the seminary. It is the heart of this mystery of our vocation that engenders gratitude in our hearts for this invitation from Christ to follow Him and to give God thanks in the only way we may fittingly do so – the celebration of the Eucharist.
The overarching theme of the Book of Hebrews is the summons to perseverance in faith in Christ; not falling from that gift of faith that has been given and received. The Book of Hebrews encourages. It challenges. It appeals to faith’s recipients not to forget their trust in the uniqueness of the life and sacrifice of Christ and thus subsequently settling for the external prescriptions of the old Law. The author of the Book of Hebrews makes a distinction on the one hand between the sacrifices of the Levitical cult of the Temple that were only being performed at that time procedurally but without the deeper covenantal obligations of interior faith in God, and on the other hand with the unique sacrifice of Jesus that does not involve merely external procedures but the total gift of His will lovingly surrendered to the will of the Father in the action of the Cross. The Book of Hebrews exhorts the community to persevere in confident faith in the work of Christ and not to return to fear that prompts a simply procedural observance of the prescriptions of the Temple worship.
The Gospel passage taken today from Luke makes clear that the fidelity to Christ’s unique sacrifice in the institution of the Eucharist (the gift of Christ’s Body and Blood) is the only way of giving God fitting thanks. In entrusting us, His disciples and priests with the mission of the Eucharist, Jesus even risks betrayal. Yet, how necessary is this act of trust on the part of Christ to the celebration of the Eucharist and to the efficacy of this unique sacrifice. Jesus’ generous act of entrustment with the sacred mysteries is what gives us the grace of confidence in His love.
Trust: The marrow of the personal commitment of faith, hope, and charity of the baptized. It is the lack of trust (and the assault on trust) that the simply procedural actions of the Levitical cult contemporary to the writing of the Book of Hebrews produced. It is the lack of trust that threatened the integrity of the Christian community. It is this lack of trust against which the author of the Book of Hebrews warns us even today. The external procedures in themselves offer no trust and thus they provide no confidence for the believer in Christ, whose perfect sacrifice offers precisely that unique gift of confidence.
Like the ritualistic proceduralism admonished against in the Book of Hebrews, the modern character of philosophy even in its contemporary textual residue tempts and seduces us to act against trust and confidence in our postmodern age.
Let’s round up the usual suspects. For example, Rene Descartes with his method of radical doubt that bleaches distinction out of nature, has produced not confidence but the arrogance of technology as an end in itself thereby damaging the covenant between physicians and patients by distorting the purpose of medicine and care.
Immanuel Kant, with his categorical imperiousness, has produced not confidence but the arrogance of ethical proceduralism. This has abolished the human need for a trustworthy and prudent mentor to act morally through the discernment of the good and the true in the midst of confusing circumstances – to have confidence in virtuous action.
Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, with their brutish man perfumed by checks and balances, have produced not peace and confidence but an uneasy truce among individuals unduly entitled by self-interest as arrogantly institutionalized by the volition of the state.
How are we to respond pastorally?
I propose a metaphor wrapped in an anecdote, most especially on this feast of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Doctor of the Church, the greatest saint in modern times, who came to Carmel mostly to pray for priests, who lived in a community as by far its youngest member (as Basselins have lived for almost one hundred years in the seminary community of Theological College). When Thérèse travelled to Rome on pilgrimage with her father and sister, the family stopped in Paris and stayed in a hotel – the hotel where Thérèse encountered an elevator for the first time. This experience led her to devise the metaphor of the elevator of God’s Grace by which God spares us the impossible staircase of self-sufficiency in the life of holiness and gives us lovingly the elevator of His grace that lifts us up to Him. Confidence rests in God’s love – not in our educational and formation methods, not in our administrative bureaucracy, never in the minimalism of liturgical proceduralism, not in our magisterial imperatives, but in Christ’s love for us in which He has called us each by name to follow Him and to care for His People.
The anecdote is noted by Bishop Patrick Ahern in his book entitled Maurice and Therese: the Story of a Love. The footnote states that the registry of the hotel in Paris where Thérèse stayed with her family shows also that Friedrich Nietszche stayed as a guest there at the same time. My Basselin formed mind likes to imagine them riding the elevator side by side with Thérèse enjoying the ride as yet another grace, and Nietzsche frantically pushing the button again and again muttering “Will to power, will to power, will to power.”
In this Year of the Basselin, the 100th anniversary of the death of Theodore Basselin, for whose repose we pray and for whose gift for our formation we thank God, we remember that his donation was given out of the desire for sound preaching of the Gospel from pastors. Not simply that our seminary formation should produce efficiently rhetorical technicians, or ecclesial bureaucrats, or imperious autocrats, but that we as priests truly preach the Word of God in order to shepherd confidently Christ’s people into the mystery of our redemption. The desire of our benefactor, Theodore Basselin, was that we do so effectively in the contemporary circumstances in which the People of God live. This desire is simply a repetition of the desire of THE BENEFACTOR – Jesus Christ. For us, charged with Christ’s mission today, our Basselin formation enables us to decipher the shards of postmodernity that wound our people and our society on a daily basis most especially in their capacity for trust and confidence. To fulfill our mission we must first trust God. Without this trust, confidence will vaporize into the arrogance and entitlement of clericalism – a truly modern characteristic.
Trust has been wounded and trust is precisely what is at the heart of our mission as the Church, more particularly in our vocation as priests, and even more particularly in the formational endeavor of the Seminary. In the seminary, the faculty, the students, and in a special way the bishops each and all have a responsibility to develop consciously trusting relationships for the formation of a healthy and confident church. Not an institution that is sick and turned inward as Pope Francis has spoken about. The human aspects of the structure of the institution itself cannot do this – only human beings can do it with God’s Grace.
The Gospel most in need of proclamation today is the restoration of confidence in our life as the Church within society. Confidence can only be engendered by trust – the marrow of living faith in Christ. It is the trust that everything is a grace. It is the wonderful and paradoxical mystery that Christ first entrusts us His priests with the celebration of the Eucharist that we might lead His people to trust Him more deeply to flourish with authentic confidence in the spread of the Gospel today.
