May 19, 2018
St. Patrick’s Cathedral
Fort Worth, Texas
Exodus 33:7-23
Psalm 89: 21-22; 25-27
Philippians 3:3b-14
Mark 3:13-19
Hoy en su ordenación al sacerdocio, ustedes son llamados de nuevo por nombre. En su ordenación al sacerdocio, Cristo les llama amigos y ustedes ven Su cara en la manera de la cara de un amigo. Son llamados para estar con El y son enviados a profetizar a Su pueblo por medio de predicar, enseñar y ejemplificar La Verdad entera de Su Evangelio.
El carácter profético de su vocación sacerdotal se nutre por el tiempo que ustedes pasan con Cristo en oración así como pasan con un amigo. El Pueblo de Dios, los cuales son hechos la Iglesia por medio de la celebración de la Eucaristía, depende sobre su tiempo pasado hablando con Cristo así como hablan con un amigo.
Para lograr Sus deseos para todo Su Pueblo, en llamarlos por nombre y llamarlos Sus amigos, les ofrece más en su ordenación sacerdotal. Cristo les ofrece una parte particular y especial en Su identidad como Hijo. Comparte con ustedes la intimidad de Su oración sacrificial de consagración hablada al Padre en la Ultima Cena a través del cual ustedes como sacerdotes-celebrantes dicen Sus palabras en El, pero con la voz de su primera persona—“Esto es mi cuerpo, esta es mi sangre.” Por hacer así, como un sacerdote ustedes reciben de Cristo la participación de la intimidad entre Jesús y Su Padre, con quien El ha conversado primero en escoger llamarles por nombre para seguirlo como Sus sacerdotes.
The Book of Deuteronomy reveals a promise that is unique and different than many of the other promises regarding the coming of the Messiah, unveiled in other parts of the Old Testament. In the Book of Deuteronomy Moses speaks, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, that is the one to whom you shall listen.” The point of the promise is that the Messiah will be a new and ultimate prophet, superior even to Moses. He will be a prophet who will fulfill the Covenant of the Law.
The role of the prophet distinguished God’s chosen people significantly from the surrounding Gentile tribes. Other tribes attempted to force entry into the future and to manipulate it through the employment of magicians or charmers; but because Israel had been chosen by the one true God and given the gift of faith—they received prophets from the Lord in place of charmers. What is the difference?
Charmers cajole idols and conjure future events for the purpose of selfish gain in an effort to control the future with the result that the false gods dominate the lives of the charmers and of those who listen to them and thereby making them slaves. Prophets, on the other hand, discern and reveal the authentic desires of God for His People. Moses, as a prophet, revealed God’s desire of the exodus of His chosen people from slavery and from sin. Authentic prophesy requires that the prophet first listen and then speak intimately with God on God’s terms. God’s terms include in God’s time.
We see in the history of God’s chosen people that there are sad moments when Israel and their prophets become afraid and impatient with God’s timing and so they set aside prophesy for the false and inebriating seductions of charm. When this occurs, the chosen people choose their own slavery in place of God’s desires for them.
Moses is the prophet of the Covenant—the Ten Commandments—the prophet of the Law. His prophesy establishes Israel’s identity as belonging to God and to each other. There is a strong communal element to Moses’ vocation as a prophet. This wandering group of exiled slaves and refugees from Egypt become one people, that is, God’s chosen people through Moses’ prophetic vocation and leadership. Moses reveals God’s desires for them. Moses speaks the truth to them. The Truth liberates them from slavery.
Our first reading today tells us that before Moses speaks to Israel of God’s desires for the people, Moses first listens and speaks with God as with a friend. The people worship in unity each in their own place when Moses converses with the Lord in the tent of intimate friendship; they not only follow Moses’ example but they also rely on Moses’ intimate conversation with the Lord God for them to worship authentically and to become their truest selves—to receive their clear identity as the chosen people of the Lord united in the Covenant with Him. This covenant and unity come about because of Moses’ intimate conversation with the Lord as with a friend. Yet, despite this closeness, Moses’ request to see the face of God is refused by God.
It will be for Jesus, the prophet greater than Moses, to speak to the glorious face of the Father not only as a friend but as a Son. Jesus fulfills the Covenant made by God with Moses. As we read in the Gospel of John, “From His fullness we have all received, Grace in place of Grace, because while the Law was given through Moses, Grace and Truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. The only Son, God, who is at the Father’s side, has revealed Him.” The face of God is revealed to us in Jesus Christ.
Today’s first reading from the Book of Exodus leads us to consider our Gospel reading from Mark in which we read that Christ spends the entire night in conversation with God before descending the mountain and calling His Apostles each by name. Jesus’ conversation with God surpasses even the nearness of friendship extended by God to Moses. Rather, Jesus speaks with God face to face with the intimacy and trust of God’s Son. As the Son, Jesus both reveals and is the face of the Father that Moses longed to see. In descending from the Mountain he calls each Apostle by name—He calls them and speaks with them as friends—they see His face as a friend sees another friend’s face. They are commanded to be with Him at the same time that they are sent to prophesy to the Truth of God’s desires of redemption for His people—the desires incarnate in Jesus Christ Himself.
Today, in your ordination to the priesthood, you are called again by name. In your ordination to the priesthood Jesus Christ calls you friends and you see His face as that of a friend. You are called to be with Him and you are sent to prophesy to His people by preaching, teaching, and exemplifying the entire Truth of His Gospel. In the celebration of the sacraments you will prophetically reveal God’s desires for His people. These desires include entrance into eternal life, freedom from original sin and membership in His Church through Baptism; these desires include the merciful absolution of sins and correction of vice in the Sacrament of Penance; these desires include the prophetic witness of the permanent, selfless, and life-giving love of the Sacrament of Matrimony in the consent made between a man and a woman; these desires include the healing of sin’s effects in illness and death through the Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick; and most especially these desires include the celebration of the Eucharist whereby His People see Christ’s face in your proclamation and preaching of the Gospel, in each other as members of the gathered assembly, in your attentively reverent and priestly presence as celebrant and presider, and most especially in the bread and wine consecrated through your praying of Christ’s words becoming His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity.
The prophetic character of your priestly vocation is nourished by the time that you spend with Jesus in prayer as with a friend. The People of God, who are made the Church through the celebration of the Eucharist, depend upon your time spent speaking with Christ as with a friend. Just as the chosen people of the Old Testament depended upon and followed Moses’ example of intimate and prayerful conversation with God in order that they could worship authentically, thus, the Priestly People, His Church, depends upon your prayerful conversation with God in Christ at the Eucharist and also in your ongoing life of prayer spoken with God as with a friend. Christ desires that you treat Him as a friend and not as a passing acquaintance or as a periodically useful benefactor. The People of God depend on this. Without this patient friendship, the prophetic aspects of your priestly vocation run the risk of becoming corrupted into a type of charm resulting in manipulation for your selfish entitlement and the people’s inebriation with a false gospel of consumption based upon their ideological preferences.
To accomplish His desires for all of His People, in calling you by name and calling you His friends, He offers you even more than friendship in your priestly ordination. Christ offers you a particular and special share in His Sonship. He shares with you the intimacy of His sacrificial prayer of consecration spoken to the Father at the Last Supper whereby you as the priest celebrant speak Jesus’ words in Him but with the voice of your first person—“This is my body, this is my blood.” In so doing, as a priest you receive from Christ the participation of intimacy between Him and His Father, with Whom He has first conversed in choosing to call you by name to follow Him as His priests.
The Rite of Ordination begins with the expressed desire of the Church that you be ordained as priests. Your worthiness is attested to, as much as any human being’s worthiness can be attested to, for the enormous responsibility and privilege of the priesthood. Earlier I began by choosing you as brothers for the priestly office. In a few moments, I will address you again but this time as sons.
The promise of obedience that you will make to me and to my successors is the obedience not of a slave but of a son. It is an obedience that involves loving discipline and not simply minimal compliance. It is an obedience that is relational and communal, not private and subjectively interpreted. As the obedience of a son it requires of me as your bishop the reciprocal attention and care of a father for the sake of the unity and mission of the Church desired by Christ and prayed for specifically by Him at His Last Supper that all may be one. In other words, the People of God require that we make ourselves available to each other in this filial relationship of obedience frequently and intentionally. Otherwise we run the risk of wrongly considering obedience to be an unjust hindrance to personal autonomy and further to misunderstand the fatherly office of bishop as needed only annually as a dispensary of sacred chrism for one’s own private ministry. Neither the bishop nor the priest should be presumptuous of the integrity of this relationship as essential to the health and life of the Church as intended by Christ and desired by the Father.
I would offer to you one final point for reflection. To assist us in receiving His gift of a priestly share in His Sonship, Christ has also given us the gift of Mary, His Mother, to be our Mother too. As He died on the Cross for our salvation He entrusted to the Beloved Disciple the care of His Blessed Mother—our care for her and her care for us. Christ is specific in that she is to be our mother and we are to be her sons. While she is the Mother and Help of all Christians, she offers in a particular way her motherly care for us as Her Son’s chosen priests. She assists us in cultivating the virtue of purity of heart; she fosters in us a sense of approachable compassion for all of God’s People; she assists us in pondering with docility the Word of God in our hearts and enfleshing it through our preaching; and she guides us as she guided the stewards at Cana by encouraging us to do whatever He tells us to do. Most especially our Blessed Mother assists us in saying yes to God with trust in the midst of frightening circumstances that would be overwhelming and insurmountable without God’s Grace. She saves us from arrogance and offers us confidence to fulfill the prophetic responsibilities of our priestly vocation. Pray to her.
