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| Photo: Juan Guajardo |
March 27, 2018
St. Patrick’s Cathedral
Fort Worth, Texas
Isaiah 61:1-3a, 6a, 8b-9
Psalm 89:21-22, 25, 27
Revelation 1:5-8
Luke 4:16-21
Es importante distinguir entre dos palabras muy apropiadas para la vida cristiana: la redundancia y la repetición. La redundancia en la vida espiritual es semejante a la definición popular de locura: hacer la misma cosa constantemente con la intención de producir un resultado diferente. La repetición en la vida católica y espiritual desarrolla nuestra incorporación en el misterio de Dios, libremente ofrecida y completamente revelada en Jesucristo; la repetición fomenta la formación de nuestro carácter con toda virtud humana ejemplificada en Jesucristo.
Para ayudarnos vivir una vida que auténticamente nos guía más profundamente en la vida de Jesucristo es importante repetir los misterios litúrgicos con una intencionalidad real. En particular, esto es importante para los sacerdotes. Por eso es bueno cuando nosotros, los sacerdotes ordenados, escuchamos estos textos bíblicos una y otra vez en la Misa Crismal, porque, cuando repetimos nuestras promesas de ordenación cada año, nos acordamos de Él, al cual nuestras vidas han sido configuradas voluntariamente, y Él en quien deseamos conocer eternamente y perfectamente en la caridad sacrificial. La repetición de nuestras promesas nos enraíza en Cristo. Cristo, los demás, y luego uno mismo — deben ser las prioridades ordenadas en nuestra vida y ministerio sacerdotal.
There is a distinction to be made between redundancy and repetition. Redundancy in the spiritual life is akin to a popular definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again with the intention of manipulating a different result each time one does the same thing. On the contrary, repetition in the Catholic spiritual life develops our incorporation into the mystery of God, freely offered and fully revealed in Jesus Christ. Repetition fosters the formation of our character with every full human virtue exemplified in Jesus Christ. For us priests, repetition fosters our full configuration with Jesus Christ, Head and Shepherd of His Church. Redundancy has to do with vicious circularity (doing the same thing again and again without making progress or accomplishing anything except narcissistic absorption); repetition has to do with the spiral: there is always forward growth and momentum in a spiral even as it circles again and again over similar words, patterns, ideas, and themes. Redundancy can enslave us; repetition can liberate us.
The bitter fruits of redundancy are isolation, complacency, and entitlement; the sweet fruits of repetition are gratitude, humility, and joy. Redundancy in the spiritual life of a priest leads him to functional minimalism; repetition in the spiritual life of a priest leads him into deeper waters of conversion and configuration with the life of Jesus Christ, Head and Shepherd of the Church — who offered His entire life freely in loving sacrifice for the life of His sheep. The essential difference in the life of the baptized Catholic between redundancy and repetition is the centrality of Jesus Christ, true God and true man.
There is a particular quality of repetition to the liturgical structure of the Chrism Mass that is even more pronounced than in other liturgical celebrations of the Mass. As priests and as your bishop, the Chrism Mass is structured with such an order as to invite us to repeat our promises that we pronounced and proclaimed on the occasions of our respective ordinations. The oils that are blessed and consecrated respectively as the Oil of the Sick, the Oil of Catechumens, and the Sacred Chrism, we will use throughout the year repetitively in the sacramental rites of Anointing of the Sick, Baptism, Confirmation, and in Holy Orders in the ordination of priests. Finally, even the Scriptural readings for the Liturgy of the Chrism Mass repeat every year. This means that the one thing that does not repeat is the homily to be preached by the bishop.
The first reading of the Mass repeats year in and year out. It is always taken from Chapter 61of Isaiah. In our proclamation of this reading we repeat Isaiah’s proclamation of the year of favor of the Lord that is to be initiated by the Lord’s anointed one — the Messiah, the Christ. The year of favor of the Lord means that God has forgiven the debt of the people accrued to Him by the idolatry and sin of His chosen people. It is a debt owed to Him in authentic and divine justice; the debt that is to be redeemed is the exile away from the land prepared for the people by the Lord God Himself. The anointing of the Redeemer prophesied by Isaiah is specified by the mission of the Lord God — the salvation and forgiveness of His People who have been broken apart and enslaved by the tedium and redundancy of sin in the worship of false gods. The mission has a universal character beyond that of tribal interests or self-preservation of a particular people.
The Gospel selection also repeats year in and year out: Luke 4:16-21. In our proclamation of this Gospel, we repeat Jesus’ proclamation in which He repeats Isaiah’s proclamation of the year of favor of the Lord. Jesus further proclaims that it is fulfilled in their hearing; it is fulfilled in our hearing. It is fulfilled in their hearing because Jesus is the Christ, the Anointed One, anointed by the Spirit for the Father’s universal mission of salvation and redemption of all those enslaved by sin and tortured by the tedium of redundancy and manipulative selfishness.
We, who are anointed at Baptism in His anointing and also even more clearly for those of us anointed at priestly and episcopal ordination in His anointing, receive particular and distinct shares and responsibilities in the ongoing mission of Christ entrusted to the Church. Christ entrusts this mission to the one true and Catholic Church washed clean in Baptism and anointed for the mission of salvation of all people brought about by the repetition involved in Her sacramental life — most centrally in the celebration of the Eucharist.
La lectura del Evangelio también se repite año tras año, seleccionada del Evangelio de Lucas. En nuestra proclamación de este Evangelio, repetimos la proclamación de Jesús en la que Jesús repite la proclamación de Isaías del año del favor del Señor. Jesús proclama además que se cumple en su presencia; se cumple en nuestra presencia. Se cumple en ese momento porque Jesús es el Cristo, el Ungido, ungido por el Espíritu para la misión universal del Padre dirigido a la salvación y a la redención de todos los esclavizados por el pecado y torturados por el tedio de la redundancia y el egoísmo manipulador. Nosotros, que somos ungidos en el Bautismo en Su unción y también más claramente para aquellos de nosotros ungidos en la ordenación sacerdotal y episcopal en Su unción, recibimos papeles y responsabilidades particulares en la misión continua de Cristo confiada a la Iglesia. Es la una, católica, y verdadera Iglesia lavada en las aguas del Bautismo y ungida para la misión de salvación de todas las personas provocada por la repetición involucrada en Su vida sacramental, la más central siendo la celebración de la Eucaristía.
For us priests, I offer a point of reflection: the importance of Christ-centered and shared repetition in our collaborative mission as the Church requires that we avoid the addition of words or gestures that are alien to the rites and liturgical texts provided us by the Church. Even though such liturgical abuses might at first glance appear to begin as good willed efforts to avoid redundancy and tedium for a people with attention spans made numb by contemporary modes of communication, such efforts remain destructive because they take us away from the repetition that bears fruit in Catholic unity. This Catholic unity is a life, mission, and identity shared beyond the life and identity of our individual parish.
Such liturgical efforts instead produce in us and in our parishioners a greater sense of isolation and entitlement to our own individual preferences and opinions. This can destructively differentiate our parish from other parishes to the point of exclusion by maintaining unique and aberrant liturgical practices. These soon place a more rigid expectation upon the celebrant and members of the liturgical assembly to conform rigidly to a sense of confusion of Catholic identity and collaborative mission as the practices become ever more redundant and unique. If we are to remain faithful to the mission of Christ, the mission of redemption entrusted to us through our anointings, we must repeat together the prayers of the liturgy in solidarity with every Catholic liturgical assembly in the Diocese and throughout the world in order to be saved from the slavery of redundancy.
The repetition and fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah by Christ are never casually received. These do not always prompt a favorable response on the part of those so evangelized. The very next scene in Luke’s Gospel is one of the people’s rejection of Jesus. These include Jesus’ extended family, childhood friends, and neighbors in His own home town. They neither want to embrace Him nor the wide expanse of His clear implication of just who is to be embraced in the year of favor of the Lord: all people. The only embrace that they offer is for the purpose of throwing Him off of a cliff. They reject Jesus because they have not received Isaiah’s prophecy with gratitude and faith; they’ve heard it before in its redundancy. They have taken both the prophecy and Jesus for granted, preferring passing familiarity over spiritual intimacy and gracious acceptance.
Perhaps, this is why the second reading that bridges the first reading and Gospel is from the first chapter of Revelation. The Book of Revelation is written in liturgical and apocalyptic language. Thus, the worship — the cult — offered to God is necessary and essential. The Book of Revelation understands Jesus in liturgical and sacrificial terms. He, the Lamb of God whom we behold at every Mass, ascends the throne because He has been willing to undergo self-giving sacrifice obediently to the Will of the Father unto death. The throne which He ascends is His Cross. He is exalted precisely because He has been debased. Revelation, as apocalyptic, then encourages us to be configured to Jesus Christ who underwent suffering and death in obedience to the Father. In the end, good will win out over evil to the proportion that love is freely given as Christ has eternally given it through His Cross.
This configuration begins with the respective anointings at Baptism and Confirmation but continues repetitively in the ongoing conversion in the life of the baptized person. For a priest, it is additionally forged at the anointing that we receive at our ordinations for the sake of pastoral leadership. This pastoral leadership involves protection of the sheep both from the cunning of the wolf and the complacency of the hired hand who complains about the perceived redundancy of his ministry as not being worth the salary of the prodigal.
It is good then that we ordained priests hear these texts again and again at the Chrism Mass, because, as we repeat our own promises of ordination yearly, we are made mindful of the One to whom our lives have been willingly configured and in whom we desire to know eternally and perfectly in sacrificial love: Jesus Christ who can neither deceive nor be deceived. He, who has entrusted us with ordained ministry, trusts each of us as He intentionally and freely trusted the dubious Thomas, the beloved John, the zealous Simon, the penurious Matthew, the impetuous Simon Peter and even the treacherous Judas Iscariot on that day in which He instituted the Eucharist and initiated the Catholic priesthood. The repetition of our ordination promises grounds us effectively in Christ.
The physicality of the oils (the reason that the Chrism Mass is called by this name) — oils which are used in so many of the sacraments, along with the bread and wine at Mass, ground the priestly ministry in a way befitting the Incarnation and keep the priesthood from becoming only a theory or simply another occupation. Just as Jesus is anointed in the very poor and marginalized ones to whom He preaches good news through our ministry, so the priest is anointed and configured to Christ at his ordination: his being more and more united with Christ beyond even the state of faithful discipleship.
Our particular and ministerial share in Christ’s priesthood is a fundamental extension of the furthering of the year of favor in its eternal characteristics: the preaching of the truth, the forgiveness of sin, the healing of illness, and the invitation to the eternal wedding banquet of the Lamb which the repetitive celebration of the Eucharist anticipates for our salvation. It is Jesus Christ who is always oriented to the “other” for the love of the Father. Christ, others, self should be the ordered and obedient priorities of our priestly life and ministry.
Catholic News Agency (CNS)
Bishop Olson: Liturgical fidelity fosters unity, discipleship
