Homily for the Ordination of Pedro Martinez to the Transitional Diaconate

Photo by Juan Guajardo/NTC

Diocese of Fort Worth
St. Matthew Catholic Church
Arlington, Texas
May 18, 2019

Acts 6:1-7b
Psalm 34
1 Peter 4:7b-11
John 12:24-26

“Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there also will my servant be. The Father will honor whoever serves me.” These words spoken by Jesus in today’s Gospel reading taken from John are striking because at first hearing they seem to be so unreasonable. How can one hate one’s life if life is a gift from God? How can one hate one’s life if life in itself is such a great and necessary good to enjoy other good blessings given to us by God? Without life, there are no other gifts worth cherishing.

Perhaps there can be a sense of reason introduced to this phrase if we accept a Scripture scholar’s insight that “to hate” is a figure of speech common in the Semitic languages of Jesus’ time to indicate that what Jesus really means is that one must love one’s own need for survival less than the call to follow, to serve and to be with Jesus. Yet, does this commentary on the language of Scripture really suffice for the radical message conveyed and revealed fully by Jesus Christ? It’s a reasonable explanation but in itself it is only a commentary that falls short in conveying the full message of the Good News of Salvation that unreasonably involves dying.

The radical and life-changing message of Jesus Christ is that like a grain of wheat, a person extends oneself beyond the limits of survival or simple human existence in this world only by willing to not live from the vantage point of self-preservation. One’s reference point is no longer the survival of oneself, but rather the person of Jesus Christ crucified and risen from the dead. The reference is not simply a perspective or a positive way of looking at things. It’s not simply making lemonade when life gives you lemons. That is too trite and reasonable.

The truth that is revealed is more clearly manifested in the call of the first deacons about which we have heard in our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles. The Apostles have called these Greek-speaking men to address the particular needs of the Greek-speaking widows and orphans — people most prone to exclusion and annihilation. Without attention to these needs, these widows and orphans will die in abandonment and isolation. The Apostles have called and appointed these deacons not so that the Apostles might remain aloof from the needs of the poor but rather that they might be more intentionally reminded of their presence and needs. While there are seven names given in this reading from Acts, only two of them have their deeds further revealed in Sacred Scripture: Philip and Stephen.

Philip witnesses to Christ’s love in his ministry in such a manner that he serves as an instrument in the conversion of Simon Magus and of the Ethiopian eunuch, both of who are brought into the Church through the generative waters of baptism. Philip loves the widows and orphans to whom he has been sent to serve. He cares for them and this love attracts the hearts of Simon Magus and the Ethiopian eunuch to the truth much more than any detailed argument or syllogism.

Stephen witnesses to Christ in his ministry in such a way that he dies a martyr’s death that is richly configured to the Crucifixion of Jesus. Stephen’s death is not simply like Jesus’ death in that both of them are violent murders; Stephen’s death is not like Jesus’ death in that similar words are spoken; Stephen’s death is configured to Jesus’ death because of love. Jesus enables Stephen to love sacrificially as Jesus’ loves sacrificially. It is a love that is so selfless as to surpass the strong emotional affection of friendship. It is a love that is so selfless as to surpass the cohesive and natural bonds of family life. It is a love that lays down one’s life for one’s friends as Jesus does. It is the love that does not calculate the cost. It is the love of the Cross that offers authentic and lasting freedom. It is this love’s sacrificial and liberating character that brings about the conversion of Paul who witnesses Stephen’s martyrdom and turns Paul from hatred and fear to love. Paul will himself heroically witness to Jesus with his own sacrificial martyr’s love that bears much fruit in the conversion of the gentiles. The reference point that makes one hate this life is love — love is greater than life because without love, life merely becomes a struggle to forestall death. Without the selflessness of love, what is reasonable is simply what involves calculation and tactics of survival that only delay the inevitable fate.

It is important to note that the instrument of Paul’s conversion was the sacrificial witness and love of the deacon Stephen — whose own martyrdom was prepared by his daily ministry of charity to those most wounded by sin and its effects — the widows and orphans who did not belong to the dominant language group or culture but whom Stephen loved and cared for. Stephen’s faithful love for Jesus present in the widows and orphans fostered in him a desire to give of himself even more to the point of laying down his life in martyrdom for the truth. When Paul was knocked off his horse and blinded, he heard the voice of Christ speak to him and Paul was able to recognize this voice because he had previously heard the voice speaking through Stephen.

Your ordination today to the diaconate is not simply transitional in the sense that it is only a step to priesthood. It is transitional in the life of the Church because it fosters in you, and in those to whom you witness, a conversion to the same love possessed by Philip, Stephen, and the other deacons to love Christ in the excluded and dispossessed people of the world. It fosters in you this love that prepares you to make the transition for an ever more demanding gift of yourself in laying down your life for your friends, as Christ continues to do through each of our lives and ministries. Through the ordered life provided to you and to the Church in your promises of chaste celibacy and obedience to me and to my successors the love of Christ will grow in you and through your sacramental witness in others. “Unless a grain of wheat should fall upon the ground and die, it remains but a single grain.”

To die in order to live? It seems so unreasonable and extreme. Dear brother priests and seminarians, how many times have we had our sanity called into question even at times by those who want to love us and to protect us. "Celibacy? Today? Be reasonable. Obedience to the hierarchy of the Catholic Church? Don’t you read the papers? Have you lost your mind? Yes, serve God, admire Jesus, do what He teaches, but within reason." Where have we heard such counsel before?

Pontius Pilate comes to mind. On Good Friday — the day of sacrificial love, the day when the Grain of Wheat dies and gives the eternal and universal fruit of love itself — Pilate places before the people two figures for them to choose between: Jesus and Barabbas. From a bystander’s casual perspective Jesus and Barabbas are very similar, each challenged the status quo. The name Barabbas means “son of the father” — Bar Abba. Jesus addressed God as “Abba,” “Father.” In a sense, Pilate places Barabbas next to Jesus as an option for the type of Messiah that the people can reasonably choose for themselves.

There is Barabbas, a Messiah who is a violent and dynamic revolutionary who conspires and wages war against the authority of an oppressive regime and thereby brings about anarchy and excitement. Barabbas promises them the intoxicating freedom to do whatever one would want to do. Barabbas offers them an earthly kingdom of one’s own prosperity and survival. Barabbas is a most reasonable choice. Next to Barabbas, Pilate places Jesus.

In Jesus they have a Messiah who proclaims unreasonably that losing oneself is the way to life. It is Jesus who is the Messiah who hides nothing and is the Light of the World. It is Jesus who is the Messiah who calls them to obedience to the will of the Father and who first lives that obedience. It is Jesus who is the Messiah of the Cross. It is Jesus who is love itself.

The prince of this world is a liar. He knows the truth well enough to hate it. He is cunning and not so blatant as to advertise openly that we should worship the devil. He only suggests that we should decide on what is reasonable; opt for the advantages of a planned and thoroughly organized world with impeccable communication. Calculate a world in which there is room for God in an individual’s life as a private concern but not a place for God to interfere in one’s essential and primary purposes. Offer God a place in your life, but do not discern where you fit in His plan. It is much more reasonable not to be inconvenienced by the Son of Mary, the Nazarene known as a carpenter, who asks so much of us in offering His life fully in sacrificial love. Any false religion subtly attempts to hide the Cross from view, or at least to make it reasonable only as a form of decoration but to remove its sacrificial character as the entrance of the Divine love into the world of humanity.

Your diaconal ministry is therefore a ministry of charity. It is a ministry of selflessness and sacrifice. It is unreasonable that you should waste your life on people who account for nothing and who can offer you no influence nor success. It is unreasonable to live in such a way because life is short, and our demise is inevitable. It is as unreasonable as the love of Philip and Stephen; it is as unreasonable as the love of Peter and Paul; it is as unreasonable as the loving obedience of Jesus to the will of His Father who ransoms a slave by sacrificing His Son.

Good Friday: Celebration of the Passion of the Lord

April 19, 2019
St. Patrick’s Cathedral
Fort Worth, Texas

Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Psalm 31:2, 6, 12-13, 15-16, 17, 25
Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9
John 18:1-19:42

Pilate asks Jesus if He is a king. Pilate is interested in what narrative he will receive from Jesus in answer to this question. A narrative is nothing more than a story that conveys a partial perspective of the truth that is really nothing more than articulated opinion. Narratives are frequently offered out of self-interest. Pilate was used to dealing in the narratives of so many interested parties who came to him in order for him to impose his power upon a situation in favor of their private interests. People would come to Pilate, as had the high priests, to give him their narrative in such a way that their interests could coincide with those of Pilate, and then they could get their way. So, the high priests speak their narrative that Jesus has made himself to be a king — a rival to Caesar as well as a rival to them — so it would be for Pilate’s convenience to do away with Jesus to improve his political standing with Caesar. Pilate wants to hear Jesus’ narrative in asking Him the question because he wants to know if Jesus has interests that coincide with his own that are even better than what the high priests have brought him.

Jesus answers Pilate not with opinion but as the Truth. Jesus is the Truth. Jesus tells Pilate, “You say that I am a king, for this I was born and for this I came into the world to testify to the Truth; everyone who belongs to the Truth listens to my voice.” Pilate cynically answers, “What is Truth?” This question of Pilate sums up his sad narrative: Pilate belongs not to the Truth but rather to nothing. This narrative remains a dominant narrative in our media, in our political life, and in our own rationalizations for our personal and social sins.

Jesus does not say a lot in this Passion account; He speaks less as the Passion account moves closer to His death. He is silent in the midst of the angry screams and accusations made by the crowds; He is silent in the midst of the scheming casuistry of the high priests; and He is mostly silent before Pilate. At one with Him in His silence is His mother, Mary. She stands with Him at the foot of the Cross with the Beloved Disciple with an immaculate love that surpasses even the naturally powerful bond between a mother and her son.

Pope Francis observed, “Festive acclamations and brutal torture; the silence of Jesus throughout his Passion is profoundly impressive. He also overcomes the temptation to answer back, to act like a ‘superstar.’ In moments of darkness and great tribulation, we need to keep silent, to find the courage not to speak, as long as our silence is meek and not full of anger. The meekness of silence will make us appear even weaker, more humble. Then the devil will take courage and come out into the open. We need to resist him in silence, ‘holding our position,’ but with the same attitude as Jesus. He knows that the battle is between God and the prince of this world, and that what is important is not putting our hand to the sword but remaining firm in faith. It is God’s hour. At the hour that God comes forth to fight, we have to let him take over. Our place of safety will be beneath the mantle of the holy Mother of God.”

The silence of Jesus and the accompanying silence of Mary are because God is speaking now. God is speaking the Truth and not offering a competitive narrative or compelling argument certainly in the manner of the high priests who seek control of a corrupt system of religious leadership, or Pilate who seeks political advancement as a transfer from Palestine, or the crowds who seek the compelling narrative of a messiah like Barabbas. God is speaking the Truth and offers no narrative to impose His way through manipulation. He speaks the Truth fully that no narrative could ever fully encompass except the fullness of the Truth spoken on the Cross. Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote that “human salvation demands the Divine disclosure of Truth surpassing reason.” God’s Word is eternal and it is spoken on the Cross. The Cross of Jesus is the Truth to which He testifies. The Truth is Himself. The fullness of the Truth is the unconditional love of God who gives His Son to ransom us from the power of evil and sin. He gives His Son that we might not settle for any narrative of lies conjured and cobbled together as partial truths when God offers us instead the fullness of the Truth who is Jesus. He gives His Son as the Truth which like love cannot impose itself on anyone. The Truth and Love that are Jesus requires a free acceptance in loving obedience of a share in His Cross. As Pope Benedict XVI wrote in Deus Caritas Est, “It is only by looking at Jesus dead on the Cross for us can this fundamental truth be known and contemplated: God is Love. In this contemplation the Christian discovers the path along which his life and love must move.”

Jesus Christ on the Cross is the Truth spoken by God. Jesus Christ on the Cross reveals the Truth of humanity in all its death-dealing ugliness rooted in the sin of the Garden and the lie of the serpent. Jesus Christ on the Cross at the same time reveals the Truth of God in all His perfect justice, life-giving mercy, and healing forgiveness that pays the price of sin and death by the sacrifice of His own Son.

Mary standing at the foot of the Cross of Her Son, preserved from stain of sin at her Immaculate Conception, is the only human being who can say in communion with God, “to ransom a slave I gave away a Son.” As Pope Francis recently preached, “At the foot of the cross, Mary thought once more of the words that the angel had spoken about her Son: ‘He will be great… The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end.’” (Lk 1:32-33) On Golgotha, Mary witnesses the rejection by sinful humanity of that promise: her Son’s brutal death on a cross among thieves. On Golgotha, Mary at the same time witnesses the fulfillment of that promise by God standing at the throne of Her fully human Son, which is the Cross where He wears His crown made of thorns and vanquishes the power of Hell and cunning of the devil, for in His dying it is finished. Mary with Christ keeps silent, because God is speaking.

Holy Thursday: Mass of the Lord’s Supper

April 18, 2019
St. Patrick’s Cathedral
Fort Worth, Texas

Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14
Psalm 116:12-13, 15-16bc, 17-18
1st Corinthians 11:23-26
John 13:1-15

In the summer of 1993, one year before my ordination to the priesthood, I was given the opportunity by Catholic Relief Services to visit the Church in Egypt as well as the Church in Burkina Faso, a nation in West Africa. The primary intention of the trip was for us to learn firsthand of the mission of relief and development provided through the generosity of Catholics in the United States as a means of solidarity and communion with other Catholics and people of good will throughout the world. The experience afforded me a firsthand encounter with two places, Egypt with a very old history of the authentic Catholic faith, and Burkina Faso with a very new history of the authentic Catholic faith. In fact, the very first baptized Catholic in Burkina Faso had just passed away one week before our arrival in the nation. When we arrived in Egypt, we participated in the Mass as the Mass had been celebrated there since approximately the year 40 A.D. — several years before Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians is judged to have been written.

In the Exodus account of Passover, we hear of how God’s people, Israel, is delivered out of slavery in Egypt and spared by God from death by water in the Red Sea. At the Last Supper, we see how the New Israel, God’s People, the Church, is given life by Christ putting death to death with the water of Baptism and the Sacrifice of the Eucharist.

Israel receives their exodus from slavery by following God’s way made known through a pillar of fire in the night, the light of faith. The people of Israel safely pass over the Red Sea without even getting their feet wet. Pharaoh and his army travel identically the same geographical path as Israel, but they are drowned in the water of the Red Sea. The difference between Israel and Pharaoh’s army is that Israel is following the path of the Lord as discerned according to the pillar of fire; Pharaoh’s army is marching the path of oppression bogged down by their armor of sin. This is a reminder to us that our path to salvation involves interior trust and conversion and not simply external compliance to rituals and practices.

The first Passover is violent. It is marked by the slaughter of the firstborn sons of Egypt, the blood of the sacrificed lamb on the lintels of the homes of the faithful Israelites, the Passover meal, eaten on the run, and including the sacrificed lamb and the unleavened bread with bitter herbs as shared by the households of the faithful Israelites; it includes the dry shod feet of the Israelites who pass without harm through the waters of the Red Sea safe from death.

Jesus, as a faithful Jew, was gathered with His disciples to celebrate this first Passover. Yet, there is more. Christ’s true and eternal Passover reminds us of the first Passover in that it involves the meal as a memorial of the first Passover, but it is different in that Christ’s Passover is lasting and eternal. It completes the first Passover and reveals more fully the significance of the first Passover. The first Passover is provisional. Christ’s Passover brings to fulfillment the first Passover because the first born who is slaughtered is Christ Himself, the Son of God. He is the Lamb that is sacrificed for all time. The bitter herbs are the herbs of His Passion and death. His blood is on the hands of all sinners but He places it on the lintels of our souls. It is not simply a provisional sacrifice of violent appeasement; it is an eternal sacrifice of Love.

The disciples who are gathered by Jesus around the table of His Passover are the descendants of God’s people who passed over the waters of the Red Sea without dying and without even their feet getting wet. At Christ’s eternal Passover, the Last Supper and the first Eucharist, Christ requires their feet to become wet as He washes them clean of sin and death that they might have the inheritance of eternal life promised and fulfilled by Him in His suffering, death, and Resurrection. The water with which He washes their feet gives them life and puts to death their death. It is the water of Baptism.

Yet, there is even more given by Christ than just Baptism — as essential as Baptism is. Christ gives them the Eucharist and the ministerial and ordained priesthood. The Eucharist more fully initiates them into His people by nourishing them with His own Body and Blood, making them one with Him and one with each other. The Eucharist makes them the Church. There is something incomplete about Baptism without the Eucharist; there are three sacraments of initiation, not one. Baptism introduces us into the life of faith and the Eucharist consummates us in the full life of charity. The waters of the Red Sea are parted that the Israelites who have shared the Passover meal might fully become God’s people in the Promised Land. The New Israel passes through the waters of baptism that they might receive the inheritance of eternal life in the lasting sacrifice of the Lamb of God and the eternal banquet of communion both inherent in the Mass. Christ is both victim and priest.

As the first Passover is a provisional testimony and revelation of God’s justice for His people, the eternal Passover of Christ fulfills the first as a revelation of God’s unconditional love who sacrifices His son to ransom us from slavery to sin and death. On Saturday at the Easter Vigil we shall sing in the Exultet, “To ransom a slave you gave away a son.” This sacrifice not only reveals God’s love for us but is our share in Christ’s inheritance offered in the Eucharist. This inheritance means that through the Eucharist we actually become able to love as He loves — with pure, selfless, and sacrificial love. It is particularly the love of the martyrs. It is the love of the virgins. It is the love of the confessors. It is the love of the saints. Most particularly it is the love of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Christ saves and redeems us not simply by a violent act of appeasement but by love. As St. Bernard of Clairvaux writes, “Of all the movements, sensations, and feelings of the soul, love is the only one in which the creature can respond to the Creator and make some sort of similar return however unequal though it be. For when God loves, all He desires is to be loved in return. The sole purpose of His love is to be loved, in the knowledge that those who love Him are made happy by their love of Him.” The sacrifice of the Mass and our reception of the Eucharist is the only means by which we can truly love in this way.

Christ intends that the Eucharist be lovingly offered and shared as a sacrifice and banquet by priests whom He has chosen and called by name that God might be worshipped as He desires to be worshipped and not as we might prefer to worship Him. Without the Mass we can only praise God, we cannot worship Him because worship entails the subordination of one’s will to the Divine will. Christ shows us again this evening that the priesthood essentially involves service and love as He washes the feet of His disciples and tells us to go and do the same — to act as slaves acted at that time. The priest’s delivery from slavery to freedom is in sharing the slavery to love as offered us in our vocation by Christ. To share in a special manner in Christ’s gift of self in love and surrender to God’s will that sinners might be ransomed and saved for eternal life. As Pope Francis said earlier this evening in Rome in his homily at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, “the Church wants the bishop to do this each year, once a year, on Holy Thursday — to imitate the act of Jesus and likewise to do well in his example for himself, that the bishop might not be the most important, but that he must be the greatest servant. And each of you should be servants of each other.”

This evening, I wet and wash the feet of 12 of you with whom I share the inheritance offered by Christ to each and all of us as the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church — not as individuals but as His people, the New Israel. I do so in poor imitation of Him and in obedience to His loving sacrifice that saves each of us from the waters of sin and eternal death. The Eucharist that we share is a communion in the love of God that requires the priesthood of Jesus Christ just as it provides the reason for the priesthood of Jesus Christ. The offering and reception of the Eucharist are both done reciprocally in remembrance of Him as He remembers each of us during His death on the Cross.