Homily For The Fourth Sunday Of Lent

Fourth Sunday of Lent
Laetare Sunday

March 22, 2020
Saint Patrick’s Cathedral
Fort Worth, Texas

1 Samuel 16:1B, 6-7, 10-13A
Psalm 23:1-3A 3B-4, 5-6
Ephesians 5:8-14
John 9:1-41

The etymology of the word “quarantine” tells us that the word comes to us from the 14th century Venetian dialect of Italian. The word is “quarantena.” It means 40 days. This period of 40 days was utilized as a protective measure for the city in that ships coming from other places were required to spend 40 days in harbor before they could come into port. This was done to ensure that the ships and their cargo did not carry the bubonic plague. In many ways we can see Lent as a quarantine in which we are isolated from the circumstances that lead us to sin, that is, from the occasions of sin, to receive ever more deeply the healing grace from God for us to grow in a healthy life of faith preparing us for Easter joy.

One of the ways in which this usually is done during Lent, besides fasting and almsgiving, is through a more frequent reception of the sacraments of Penance and of Holy Communion. The current circumstances make that to be an impossibility for so many of us. Yet, this is not a cause for despair because even though we may not have access to the sacraments in the usual way — we must recall that while the sacraments are the ordinary means of God’s grace — we also have the extraordinary means by which God gives us His grace in the quarantine of reflection and meditation on Revelation through the Scriptures and Sacred Tradition, considering the experience of suffering that we are having and with that of our loved ones. God is merciful and this time of quarantine leads us to a greater sense of gratitude for the sacraments that we can otherwise too readily take for granted.

The story of the man born blind offers lessons to us about how an honest person can, over time and through repetition, progress from a new faith to a mature faith. We see in the Gospel how gradual growth and maturity in faith come to the man born blind through his encounter with Jesus. Yet, we also see that there is a cost to the man as he lets go of his blindness and willingly decides to accept Jesus’ loving offer to cure him. As he grows in faith and sees more, he suffers more — to the point of rejection by his loved ones. His experience then is united with Christ’s rejection and suffering and he is converted.

The disciples question Jesus about who is responsible for the man’s blindness since he was not responsible for it himself. Powerlessness, unless it’s met with faith and right reason, can lead us to fear and blaming and looking for scapegoats in times of crisis. In times of pain and distress, looking for someone to blame does not free us from our pain. Likewise, looking for someone to blame does not help a sinner achieve deliverance from sin; only authentic and honest confession of our sins before God can do that.

Grace is as real as nature. The soul is as real as the body. Christ heals both soul and body and we who are healed through grace become ministers of Christ’s healing love of soul and body of our neighbor in need. This healing is the mission of the Church, soul and body, despite contemporary narratives that attempt to separate the soul from the body as if it weren’t essential to a human being.

For the blind man, gaining sight has unexpected costs. He is rejected by his family, the religious leadership of the day, and others. The more he moves from awareness of Jesus, to knowledge of Jesus and finally to faith in Jesus, the more intensely he experiences rejection by those who refuse to see and to accept the truth set out before them through the example of God healing the blind man. This reveals to us all the real cost that is exacted upon us for authentic discipleship of Jesus.

These days in which we find ourselves quarantined in one form or another are more than merely coincidental. They are more than a matter of fate. In God’s providence, they provide us with opportunities — at once costly and valuable. Our faith brings us to the realization that God has placed us here in these times for ministry and service to those affected by the bitter fruits of sin, including sickness, suffering, alienation, and death. Our isolating in self-quarantine is not estrangement from, nor abandonment of our neighbor, when we accept quarantine in faith and employ it with right reason as a means to love our neighbor with due regard for his spiritual and bodily healing. The Church has always responded to the bitter effects of sin through confidence born of faith, and ministry guided by right reason and sound, prudential judgment. We must do the same today.

As we pass through these following hours, days, and weeks, we can draw from the same confidence that we are courageously following the example and call of Jesus Christ and share in His suffering even to the point of rejection and blame by others. Grace liberates us from the virus of irrational fear and the contagion of sin. Grace heals. Grace also awakens us to our responsibilities of mercy and service to our neighbor in need. Grace recasts our suffering caused by sin to become a means for us to love when we unite our suffering with the Passion and death of Jesus Christ.

In today’s Gospel passage, we see that the light is welcomed only by those who know that they are incomplete, who know that life offers more than this present darkness, and who know that we are called to be heralds of the divine light that heals and liberates. According to our circumstances, by work of prayer, prudence, and consultation, each one of us can act as a witness to Christ’s saving light. In this time of various quarantines, we can and should find ways that we can still perform the spiritual and corporal works of mercy, loving our neighbor for the love of God — mindful of the spiritual needs of our soul and prudent with such protective requirements as social distancing and hygienic hand washing for the protection of our bodies and the protection of our neighbor’s health. If we do that, then I believe—firmly—that lives will be saved, and souls will be saved, and, best of all, God will be glorified.

Homily for Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve

December 24, 2017
St. Patrick’s Cathedral
Fort Worth, Texas

Isaiah 9:1-6
Psalm 96: 1-2, 2-3, 11-12, 13
Titus 2:11-14
Luke 2:1-14

“There was no room for them in the inn.” So Mary and Joseph and the unborn Christ child go to the stable where Christ is born. He is wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger. All of us recognize this verse and these images, even if we are only vaguely familiar with the story of Christmas.

Yet, this expression that there is “no room in the inn,” the image of swaddling clothes, and the symbol of the manger are so much more than a commentary on the human condition’s insensitivity to the plight of those in need. These images also reveal to us that in coming to us through the Incarnation, God will no longer tolerate man only making room for God as a small compartment within man’s life. Humanity has no other option in moving forward than to decide whether or not to belong to God.

For now at Christ’s birth, when man has no room for God, God makes room for man in the fullness of divine life. God meets us where we are in our humanity — in the stable, in the darkness, in the margins of society and family life, in the dank smell of sin and corruption — but God does not leave us there. The Son of God, the Prince of Peace, does not first reveal Himself to the exalted and the powerful because they are not like the shepherds who are keeping watch; the exalted and the powerful think that they already have made a small place for God in each of their lives that He might fit into their own plans. The exalted and those esteemed greatly by the world are not keeping watch tonight, because they are preoccupied with their own purposes.

This idea of “keeping watch” is a central theme of Jesus’ message as presented throughout Luke’s Gospel. Luke’s Gospel begins with shepherds keeping watch and staying awake in the dark of night. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus asks His Apostles present to keep watch with Him and to stay awake in the dark of night. The shepherds are watchful people because in their poverty they cannot offer God a small part of their lives. They depend totally on His Providence; it’s all or nothing and so they are watchful for Him. As Pope Benedict XVI once observed, “Only a watchful heart can instill the courage to set out to find God in the form of a baby in a stable.”

The shepherds arrive at the stable and they find the Infant Jesus swaddled in rags. They encounter God who has swaddled Himself in the human condition so that humanity can be swaddled in Jesus’ divinity through the grace of Baptism. This swaddling of the Infant Jesus highlights that God has made Himself to be vulnerable through the full humanity of Jesus — but even more so, God has made Himself to be the most vulnerable among all vulnerable human beings: He has become a swaddled infant. In the vulnerable Infant Jesus we see God’s refusal to tolerate any longer His being offered only a spare room in man’s life. God demands not capitulation to His power on our part, He only asks for our love.

The celebration of Christmas Mass at Midnight has always most vividly called to mind the mystery of God made Man, Emmanuel, God-with-us. The celebration of warm joy in the midst of cold and darkness reminds us most beautifully that Christ is the light of the world shining brightly in the darkness — the darkness of our lives and of the world. In a special way, the placing and blessing of the statue of the Infant Jesus in the manger scene places all of us gathered here tonight in that original manger scene. It helps us to belong in the manger spiritually and to remember who belonged there on that great night so many years ago.

Who belonged there in the stable? The angels proclaim the birth of the Christ child and the shepherds hear them. The shepherds were in the outskirts and fields, caves and valleys seldom venturing into the town. The shepherds are watchful because they have no place of their own so they have no spare room for God in their lives. In their watchfulness God reveals fully in the Infant Jesus their place in God’s life and not God’s part in their lives. The shepherds who are unrecognized by so many are the first to recognize the Infant in the manger as the Christ. In so doing, the shepherds belong to Him in the stable.

Mary and Joseph, having heard their respective calls through the Archangel Gabriel and through another angel are blessed by their respective and extraordinary graces; they recognize the true identity of the Infant Jesus who is born tonight because they have been watchful and attentive to God in faith and in reverential love. In so doing, Mary and Joseph belong to Jesus in the stable.

As we look at the stable, we see the ox and the donkey on either side of the Infant Jesus with Mary and Joseph. Even the ox and the donkey belong to the Christ child as the Anointed One — Emmanuel — God-with-us. Why aren’t the donkey and ox mentioned in the Gospel story? The ox and donkey are not mentioned in Luke’s Gospel, many literalists object. Yet we read in the very first chapter of Isaiah in its third verse: “An ox knows its owner, and a donkey its master’s manger; but Israel does not know, my people have not understood.” The presence of these animals fulfills the prophesy of Isaiah and the ox and donkey belong there.

Who isn’t watchful and who chooses not to belong in the stable? Herod, the Roman Empire’s bureaucrats, the inn keepers, and others who are too busy and too preoccupied to belong.

The philosophers, the experts, and those who already have a spare room for God in their lives miss the song of the angels and the birth of the Christ Child. In keeping a spare room for God, they choose not to belong to Him but to treat Him as an occasional guest whom they invite when they are bored. They are either asleep or about other evil business transacted in the dark of night; the very darkness in which the light of the Christ Child now shines so brightly.

Reason itself, unaided by faith, does not permit us to watch for the mystery of God’s victory in the defenseless Infant Jesus who conquers humanity by vulnerable love. Reason, unaided by faith, fosters isolation and selfishness in each of these groups who choose not to belong in the stable. This is the selfishness which darkens the intelligence of human beings so that they miss their true identity of belonging to God and to each other as His children; they sadly prefer the tinseled allure of individualism. This darkness still pervades in much of our world today. Yet, the light of the Christ Child shines ever brighter in its midst on this Christmas morning.

As Pope Francis remarked about this Gospel, “The newborn Child challenges us. He calls us to leave behind fleeting illusions and to turn to what is essential, to renounce our insatiable cravings, to abandon our endless yearning for things we will never have. We do well to leave such things behind, in order to discover, in the simplicity of the Divine Child, peace, joy and the luminous meaning of life.”

So fallen humanity receives its Savior in a manger, a place where animals go by instinct to feed. Yet, the same Christ child will grow and as a man nourish our fallen humanity with the redemptive banquet of His Body and Blood, the Eucharist — the Sacrament whereby we can truly belong.

Yet, do we belong here tonight? Or, are do we prefer the company of the cunning Herod who sees the Christ Child as a threat to his power and caprice? Are we with the indifferent Roman bureaucrats who ignore the Christ child until the status quo is threatened? Are we in commerce with the inn keepers who have not even a spare room for the Christ child or His parents except insofar as they could add to the profit margin?

Are we willing to accept the gift of belonging in the stable with Mary and Joseph? Mary, weary from travel and child birth, exhausted in the stench of a stable, the only place of refuge; Joseph, saddened and shamed for not being able to provide more in the keeping of his promise to the angel in serving as the guardian of Mary and Jesus.

Our gift of belonging to God in Christ requires our not having a spare room for Him but embracing in our weakness His room for us; it requires our swaddling in His divinity through the gift of Baptismal Grace; and it requires our being nourished and transformed at the banquet of His sacrificial love, the Eucharist.

Christ is born again in our lives. His light shines in the darkness of our selfish human condition. He welcomes us back to belong again to our redeemed human nature that was wounded by sin but now in the manger surpasses even the original state of our humanity in the Garden of Eden. Today is born our Savior, Jesus Christ the Lord. May His light and His love bless us with watchful hearts.

Homily for Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time

November 19, 2017
St. Patrick’s Cathedral
Fort Worth, Texas

Proverbs 31:10-13, 19-20, 30-31
Psalm 128:1-2, 3, 4-5
1 Thessalonians 5:1-6
Matthew 25:14-30

The talents that the Master entrusts to his servants are his possessions for the purpose of generating more gifts and talents in his household, to which the servants belong. The talents belong to the Master — not to the servants. The first two servants in the Gospel reading are able to trust in order to do just what the Master has asked them to do — that is, to be generative — so that, when the time of accounting and reckoning comes they will be able to show the fruit of the Master’s own generativity. The Master is in effect sharing the gift of his own generativity.

The last servant refuses to do what the Master asks him to do; he instead thinks of the entrusted talent of the Master as his own autonomous possession. The last servant who has the least loses that with which he has been entrusted because he has refused to trust the generativity of the Master. The last servant thinks only of himself and fears the risk of generativity, so he buries the talent and stays to himself, thereby refusing the stewardship of generativity.

The metaphor of the talents in our Gospel speaks to the Lord’s generosity with us of His many gifts that He has offered to us for our service to Him. In particular, I think that it is appropriate to speak of the gift and purpose of sexuality and the capacity to be generative that is entrusted to each of us as human being — each one of us with a particularly God-given gender that is part of our own nature and not the consequence of our own subjective identification.

The sin against generativity produces a false sense of entitlement and autonomy that is little more than selfishness and fear. It shows itself through such actions as contraception, pornography, fornication, infidelity, the unavailability and insensitivity within the covenantal and sacramental life of matrimony, and even most destructively in domestic violence within family life. The sin against generativity can also produce a similar sense of autonomy among celibate priests and religious. As Pope Francis writes in Evangelii Gaudium, "Today we are seeing in many pastoral workers, including consecrated men and women, an inordinate concern for their personal freedom and relaxation, which leads them to see their work as a mere appendage to their life, as if it were not part of their very identity. At the same time, the spiritual life comes to be identified with a few religious exercises which can offer a certain comfort but which do not encourage encounter with others, engagement with the world, or a passion for evangelization. As a result, one can observe in many agents of evangelization, even though they pray, a heightened individualism, a crisis of identity, and a cooling of fervor. These are three evils which fuel one another."

The virtue by which human beings develop and share the entrusted gift of their sexuality is the virtue of chastity. It is through chastity that we are able to show respect and reverence for the gift of sexuality as still belonging to the Lord but as requiring our grateful and attentive stewardship. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that "chastity means the successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner unity of the human person in his or her bodily and spiritual being. The virtue of chastity therefore involves the honesty and integrity of the person and the integrality of the gift." Note that the Catechism uses the term "integration" and uses neither the terms "domination" nor "repression." Chastity develops the gift of sexuality in some people for the virtue of fidelity and love in married life. It will develop in others the integrity of a generous and morally single life. It will develop in still other people the significant expression of celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom in light of Jesus’ celibacy through the lives offered as either priests or vowed and consecrated religious.

The virtue of chastity includes an apprenticeship in self-mastery, which is formation in human freedom. In other words, one is always learning and growing in self-awareness and respect for other people. One can never consider it acquired once and for all. It requires vigilant effort and conscious practice and one should never give in to discouragement — or like the selfish servant in the Gospel, refuse even to make the effort. It involves trust of God and trust of others. The effort required can be more intense in certain periods, such as when the personality of a human being is being formed during adolescence, or during periods of grief or transition. Prayer and an active participation in the sacramental life of the Church — including regular confession and reception of Holy Communion — foster dispositions of honesty and integrity needed to live a generatively chaste life.

The reckoning by the Master spoken of in today’s Gospel is not an impersonal and cold accounting. It is measured by the generativity itself given by the Master; it is measured not by objects but by joy; it is quantified not by productivity of investment but by the selflessness of love. It is the love of the Cross, it is the love of the sacrifice of the Mass at which we, unworthy though we are, are invited to share in the banquet of selfless trust.

Homily for Holy Thursday, Mass of the Lord’s Supper

The Last Supper, Leonardo da Vinci

April 13, 2017
St. Patrick’s Cathedral
Fort Worth, Texas

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

One of the first bitter fruits of the sin of our first parents in the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve did not trust God, was the loss of trust on the part of human beings towards God, between man and woman in particular and among human beings in general. This introduction of suspicion in place of trust produced domination and oppression; in place of love it produced violence and possession. The first reading from Exodus speaks of the Passover. The Israelites are spared the last punishment to be visited upon Egypt. They are first to prepare a meal to be eaten as part of a sacrifice; they are to eat with their shoes on their feet as a people in flight. They begin by fleeing and seeking refuge from oppression. They begin their flight as a mob of refugees but it is the Covenant made between God and Moses on their behalf that makes them a people on pilgrimage to the Promised Land. The Lord keeps His promise.

The Israelites by God’s mercy are led dry-shod through the Sea, as we will sing in the Exultet this Saturday night at the Easter Vigil. Israel’s oppressors are drowned; their freedom is given to them by the Lord. That gift of freedom is the fruit of God’s Covenant. It is the Covenant by which God makes them a people with an identity and a sense of belonging. They move from slavery and being possessed as property to freedom and belonging to God and to each other. The Lord keeps His promise.

The Lord Jesus celebrates the Passover meal with His chosen disciples, each called by name. He washes their dry feet, made dirty by the grime of their sinful human condition. The Lord Jesus washes their feet and commissions them to do the same for others. The Lord keeps His promise.

The Last Supper is the first Passover fulfilled. The Last Supper first prefigures the lasting Passover; the Lord’s giving of His life freely on the Cross. The Lord who has power to lay down His life and to pick it up again—does so with unconditional love for us in His Cross and Resurrection.

The Passover is about trust. The trust of Moses is imperfect and incomplete so he is prevented from entering the Promised Land. The trust of Jesus is perfect and complete and He leads us each washed clean into His Kingdom. Jesus is trusting and obedient to His Father’s Will because He completely loves the Father. Jesus trusts Peter, although Peter will deny him out of fear and weakness. Yet, Jesus knows this and intentionally trusts Peter. Jesus trusts the three apostles to stay awake with Him to pray—although Jesus knows that each of them will fall asleep. Yet, Jesus knows this and intentionally trusts the three apostles. Jesus trusts Judas as His apostle, although he knows that Judas will betray Him. Jesus is not suspicious and He is not naïve in His trust of Judas or the other apostles. Jesus is intentional and conscious about His trust because it is part of His mission of redemption. The capacity to trust is part of the human condition that is in need of being redeemed. Jesus is fully aware and He trusts. The Lord keeps His promise.

Jesus trusts the disciples with His mission, to wash each other’s feet with mercy and forgiveness—part of trust. Jesus trusts the Apostles with the ministry of the priesthood to celebrate the Eucharist and to shepherd His people. The Eucharist is about trust. The trust of the Eucharist is an intimacy of agape; it is an intimacy of charity. The Eucharist makes us become the Church and not simply a congregation of like-minded individuals. The Eucharist gives us the grace to trust.

In making us to become the Church the Eucharist is also so closely identified with the other sacraments. The Eucharist as a covenant of trust between Christ and His Church is united with the sacramental covenant of marriage, the trusting and complete self-donation of a man and woman to each other with intimacy that confers holiness on husband and wife. The sacrament of Holy Orders, especially the vocation of the priesthood, is laden with trust, the trust to say "yes," the trust to persevere in obedience and celibate chastity, the trust of the Seal of the Confessional. Jesus entrusts all of this to His Church and to his priests serving within the Church. His gift of Himself on the Cross is at the heart of the gift of His Body and Blood on Holy Thursday. The gifts of the bread and wine become His gift of His Body and Blood at Mass that in turn make us His Church. In doing so, Jesus knows our sinfulness and He trusts us as He frees us to trust Him. The Lord keeps His promise.

Jesus, I trust in you!

Priestly Ordination of Fr. Joseph Keating, Fr. Nghia Nguyen, and Fr. Matthew Tatyrek

Homily for Priestly Ordination of Fr. Joseph Keating, Fr. Nghia Nguyen, and Fr. Matthew Tatyrek
St. Patrick’s Cathedral,Fort Worth, Texas
May 21, 2016

Readings:
Numbers 11:11b-12, 14-17, 24-25a
2 Corinthians 5:14-20
John 21:15-17

Photo by Donna Ryckaert

The readings for our ordination liturgy today begin and end with two conversations. The first reading from the Book of Numbers offers us the conversation between Moses and the Lord. The Gospel reading presents the conversation between Peter and the Lord Jesus. There are questions and responses; there are petitions and there are promises.

Moses is following the Lord, leading the Lord’s own People through the wilderness, a journey towards the land that has been promised to them, a journey that requires discernment and trust in the Lord God. It is in this journey that they have begun as refugees from slavery that they are to become a pilgrim people — God’s chosen and pilgrim people — through faithful trust in God and in God’s chosen agent, Moses.

Prayer of Moses
Ivan Kramskoy, 1801

Moses is asking the Lord for help because he needs it. He recognizes that there are an increasing number of the people who are abandoning their identity as God’s Chosen People made so by His Covenant with them — and instead turning back in fear to a life of slavery. They risk losing their identity as one people — God’s one chosen people — they risk dissipating into a mob of individuals, lonely, with no meaning to their lives except the slavery of fear driving them into selfishness and idolatry.

So the Lord answers Moses. The Lord raises up seventy wise men. They aren’t wise in education, they aren’t wise in experience, they aren’t wise in technical skills — they are wise in the willingness to trust the Lord — and in so doing they receive the grace of God in a portion of His Spirit that He has already given to Moses. These elders are to serve as bridges between the people and God. They are to serve as bridges among the people with each other, uniting them in the mission of the pilgrimage to true and lasting freedom in God, when fear would otherwise drive them apart and surround them with the slavery of self-imposed walls of isolation and self-centeredness.

These chosen elders prefigure priests and their ministry in the life of the Church. A priest is a bridge — a pontifex. As Pope Benedict XVI wrote — -“No man on his own, relying on his own power, can put another in touch with God. An essential part of the priest’s grace is the gift, the task of creating this contact… As an act of God’s infinite mercy, he calls some “to be” with Him and to become, through the sacrament of Orders, despite their human poverty, sharers in His own priesthood, ministers of sanctification, stewards of His mysteries, “bridges” to the encounter with Him and of His mediation between God and man and between man and God.”

The marrow of a priest’s being a bridge is anchored in the conversation that Christ initiated with him when he first heard Christ’s call to follow Him. This conversation between Christ and the priest might be better understood in the light of the conversation between Jesus and Peter that is revealed to us in today’s Gospel which ends with Jesus’ words spoken to Peter, “Follow me.” The conversation in the Gospel today is only part of an ongoing conversation that began with Christ’s first call to Peter to follow Him. The conversation intensified when Christ gave Peter the keys of binding and loosing. The conversation continued at the Last Supper with the washing of Peter’s feet and his promised fidelity to be denied in futility. The conversation quiets at Calvary. The conversation echoes through the empty tomb, picks up again in the post Resurrection scene depicted in today’s Gospel, reverberates through the peripheries of the world after Pentecost, and culminates in Peter’s martyrdom — the death for love that Jesus alludes to in today’s reading.

In today’s conversation Jesus asks Peter, are you willing to sacrifice yourself for me. Peter, having been humbled by his threefold denial, responds in a paraphrase, “let’s just be friends.” Jesus repeats the question, are you willing to give yourself for me — Peter responds, “I am your friend.” Jesus patiently meets Peter where he is at and asks Peter for his friendship, because it is in friendship where self-sacrifice begins again. To be friends with the Lord requires the grace of a conversation, a dialogue — the dialogue of prayer by which Peter, and by which each of us priests will grow towards self-sacrifice — the self-sacrifice of true Christ-like love — the love of the Cross — the death that Peter will undergo.

St. Peter and St. Paul
El Greco, 1607

This is the love that St. Paul writes about in today’s second reading from his second letter to the Corinthians. It is the love of Christ given to us. It is the love of Christ that we receive. It is the love of Christ that we now have the capacity to offer to other people. St. Paul shows us how Christ has united the vertical dimension of atonement to God for the offense of sins with the horizontal dimension of reconciliation among human beings alienated from each other. The vertical and horizontal dimensions are the two beams of the Cross — Christ’s Cross.

Each one of us shares in the Cross. By his ordination and ministry, a priest shares intimately in Christ’s priestly sacrifice of atonement and reconciliation through his celebration of each of the sacraments — most especially the Eucharist and Penance. It is this sacrificial aspect of a priest’s life that enables him to lead the People of God, the New Israel, from slavery to selfishness and sin towards the freedom of the baptized. It is this sacrificial aspect that motivates a priest to go to the peripheries of society to reach those who otherwise would collapse in fear and confusion. It is this sacrificial aspect of a priest’s life that illuminates a priest with the truth of the Gospel to enlighten those lost in the fog of error. It is this sacrificial aspect that empowers a priest to shepherd people away from the walled off isolation experienced as part of a mob of individuals towards the Communion offered and shared that makes us the Church — Christ’s Body. “Understand what you do, imitate what you celebrate, and conform your life to the mystery of the Lord’s Cross.”

Dear Sons, in a few moments, the conversation will continue with the questions that I will ask in the Person of Christ and in the name of the Church. Christ will say to you again, “Follow me.” The conversation will continue with your promises. It will continue with Christ in your daily prayer and ministry throughout your lives. It will grow in your development in God’s Grace to give of yourselves to Christ and His People, to begin with friendship and to culminate in the self-sacrifice of the Cross — of authentic Christ-like love in your life and ministry by which you will be able to meaningfully and humbly stand at the altar and say, “This is my Body, this is my Blood.”

+ Most Rev. Michael F. Olson
Bishop of Fort Worth

Chrism Mass

Homily for Chrism Mass
March 22, 2016

Readings:

Photo by Juan Guajardo / NTC

Revelation 1:5-8
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.”

Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion

Entry Of The Christ In Jerusalem, Jean-Leon Gerome, 1897, Public Domain

Homily for Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion
March 20, 2016

Readings:
Isaiah 50:4-7
Philippians 2:6-11
Luke 22:14-23:56


Jesus is welcomed into Jerusalem by shouts of “Hosanna to our king!” He is initially welcomed by a people with who have an identity of solidarity, who belong and know themselves, who are made God’s people by the Covenant. They are a people who have a King—who have Christ as their King. Christ has come to fulfill the Covenant and make them a triumphant people. Yet, we see that once the people recognize that their King’s throne is the Cross, they become a mob and a faceless crowd—unruly, indifferent and apathetic, filled with anger and selfishness, and self-will. My will be done, not Thy will be done.

In Sacred Scripture, the activity of crowds always demonstrates a lack of faith, unruliness and resistance, or rejection of the Will of God revealed to them in the Covenant or by the prophets. There is a lack of identity, self-awareness, and belonging in a person’s being subsumed in such a crowd or faceless mob.

This is the case for today. At the start, the people are happy to do God’s Will because it is easy and goes according to their private interests, but when it becomes clear that God’s Will involves surrender and conversion, they turn away. The people, who soon recognize that the Cross is Christ’s throne and that He has come in loving obedience to accomplish the Father’s Will, place their own will in front of God’s will and become hardened to Christ’s mission of salvation. They lose their identity and awareness of themselves as belonging to God. They become dominated by fear, indifference, and rage. Christ has come to save them, but not in the way that they would choose or according to their plans. My will be done, not Thy will be done.

When we sin, when each of us places his or her own will in front of God’s Will; each of us loses his or her identity and sense of belonging as we place a wall between ourselves and God and our neighbor—a huge wall—a wall of indifference, of apathy, of selfishness and fear, of anger and hatred. My will be done, not thy will be done.

When we accept in faith God’s will for us by loving our neighbor and seeking forgiveness, we accept the Cross of Jesus Christ. The Cross of Jesus Christ is at once the perfect act of love performed by God and the perfect act of love performed by humanity. This gives us our identity as God’s people through forgiveness and mercy and authentic freedom to love as God loves. To love is to accept our share in the Cross of Jesus—in so doing we reject sin and are spared from the isolation experienced in the chaotic selfishness of a mob. To love is to say Thy will be done, not my will be done.

+ Most Rev. Michael F. Olson
Bishop of Fort Worth