Homily for The Midnight Mass

December 25, 2019
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

It is very difficult to see in the darkness. We can stumble over things and get hurt in the darkness. We can become agitated by our imagination when we are in the dark. The darkness can make us feel isolated and lonely, not seeing and not being seen. Yet, our eyes can soon grow accustomed to the darkness and we can become satisfied with stumbling around a room in the dark. We can soon numb our imagination’s turbulence simply by imagining that “there’s no need to be afraid of the dark.” The darkness can begin as our acquaintance, soon become our companion, and end up serving as a friend of our convenience.

The shepherds kept watch over their flocks in the dark of night. They paid attention and kept watch amid the darkness in order to protect their flocks from very real dangers that they knew prowl in the dark of night to prey upon the flock — dangers that their experience had taught them were not simply figments of their imaginations. The shepherds paid attention in the darkness of night. Their attentiveness to their watch prepared them to hear the angels sing and to see God’s glory in the Christ Child born in circumstances familiar to them including the dark dank of a stable, probably where many of them had been born or seen their children born.

They were accustomed to the dark and how to pay attention in the dark, but their encounter with the Christ Child revealed to them that they don’t belong to the dark, nor would the dark prevail. They recognize in the Child that, even more than the Child belonging to them in their poor circumstances, they belong to the Child who is born as the Light of the World in the midst of darkness — so that they might become one with this light of the world.

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 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 and attentive in the dark of night. The shepherds are watchful people because in their poverty they cannot offer God only a small part of their lives. They depend totally on His Providence; it’s all or nothing and so they are watchful for Him. The shepherds cannot afford to befriend the dark. 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.”

We are here tonight in this cathedral amid darkness because God has given us the grace to pay attention as the shepherds paid attention to the light amid darkness. We are here because in the same Christ Child born anew amid the darkness, we see by the Light of the world the real and unconditional love of God. The Christ Child has brought us here so that our eyes can no longer remain accustomed to the darkness nor can we settle by living alone and isolated with the figments of our imaginations. We realize in the dark of night in this cathedral that there is no need to be afraid of the darkness. Only when we live as children of the Light, the Light is never extinguished and casts no shadows.

Unlike the figments of our imagination stunted by the dark, the Christ Child is not imaginary. He is really born of Mary. Christ is the Light of the World, who can neither deceive nor be deceived. A proverb holds that you become what you love. Adam and Eve loved the darkness and so human beings became dark. Yet, God loved human beings, and so He became one of us that we might be one with the Light and no longer of the dark. The real presence of God’s love outflanks and undercuts the pretense of human imagination.

Our entrance procession for the celebration of this Mass began with the hymn “Adeste Fideles.” We translate this roughly as “O Come all Ye Faithful,” but “Adeste” more truly is translated as “Be Present, Be Attentive.” We are attentive to two messages of the mystery of this night: the historic and the prophetic. There is the historic and real scene of the crib, the compelling scene of the poor shelter of the stable protecting Mary and Joseph, the birth of the Christ Child, shivering in the cold and swaddled for His warmth and protection, the baby Jesus sleeping where animals feed. Everything about this scene grabs our attention: the night, the cold, the poverty, the injustice, the indifference, the solitude; and, then, the incomparable message of the angels, the arrival of the shepherds, the light casting away the darkness.

Our faithful attention should also turn next to the second message of Bethlehem, the prophetic message of the Christ Child. The Child born tonight is Christ the Lord who is our Savior, sent by the Father to deliver us from the darkness of sin and fear. We are attentive to His birth as the Light of the World, and because of this, we are attentive to His mission that He generously offers us as our mission of light into darkness. Thus, we leave tonight obliged in love to be attentive to His presence in others who are affected by and accustomed to the darkness — so in need of the light that now has shone upon and in us. Our attentiveness has brought us to the stable tonight with the shepherds to see the Christ Child; our attentiveness must guide us out of this cathedral tonight to see the same Christ Child present in the poor, in the unborn, in the refugee, in victims of crime, in those wounded in battle, in those who are ignored and overlooked in a society that has grown accustomed to the darkness and indifferently imagines the darkness to be inevitable and not all that bad.

The vulnerable baby in the manger, the Word made flesh, proclaims in the wordlessness of infancy that He requires of us only our love. As Pope Saint Paul VI reminded us on Christmas night many years ago, “Is not that power which is Christ exercised completely for us, for our benefit, for our salvation, for our love? Christ came for us, not against us. He is not a competitive rival to us. He is not an enemy. He is a guide for us on our way, He is a friend. And that means for all of us: each and every one of us can rightly say: the Christ Child has come for me.”

Homily for The Memorial of St. John of the Cross on The Occasion of Biannual Meeting of St. John Paul II Shepherd's Guild

December 14, 2019
St. John Paul II Shepherds Guild
St. Patrick’s Cathedral
Fort Worth, Texas

1 Corinthians 2:1-10A
Psalm 37:3-4, 5-6, 30-31
Luke 14:25-33

Today we gather to pray as members of the St. John Paul II Shepherd's Guild on this Advent Saturday and celebrate the Memorial of St. John of the Cross. He is a great doctor of the Church whose life and teaching were instrumental in the renewal of the Carmelite order and that of priestly life in the period immediately after the start of the Protestant reformation at a time of great turmoil and scandal in the life of the Church.

The words of Jesus in today’s Gospel serve as our beginning and ending point for our reflection. “If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” The family is the most important foundation to society. This is a point of nature, so why does Jesus speak of “hatred for the father and mother etc.?” He is not telling us to hate but rather He means that which we naturally think is the most important part of life, is actually less than the Cross involved in true discipleship of Jesus — the Cross of sacrificial love that necessarily involves the pain of suffering, the suffering of conversion. He is showing us that family life is not meant to look inward but to look outward in care and concern for others, as Christ does. The Gospel is not about establishing a family dynasty; a dynasty that in priestly life can look like a club or a clique, just as parish life can look like a club or a clique. The institution must serve the mission of the salvation of souls, not the other way around.

St. John of the Cross truly experienced this life of conversion only after he was ordained a Carmelite priest with the religious name of John of St. Matthias. He encountered Teresa of Avila who introduced him to the truth that priestly and religious life is not about belonging to a clique or being part of a club. Priestly life necessarily involves caring about people as Christ cares for them. It is about caring for people by telling them the truth of the Gospel and of conversion to the truth even though that conversion costs us suffering and rejection. Saint John of the Cross did not suffer from the hands of Moslems, or atheists, or from the adherents of the Protestant reformation. He suffered from Catholics and clerics who didn’t want to live the authentic faith. He suffered from Catholics and clerics who preferred to make the Church and their vocation a membership in an elite club. This was his cross that he offered for the sake of the very people who rejected him — out of love for Christ. He did so not to get his own way but out of obedient love for Christ. This, in many ways today, is the priest’s share in the Cross of Jesus, the suffering of love.

The cross is not suffering for its own sake. It’s not simply being in pain. To be stretched for greater glory is our experience and share of the Cross of Jesus Christ. Priests especially are called to embrace this stretching by Christ for the sake of the salvation of the people who, like ourselves, are not inclined in their human condition to embrace the same mystery of the cross because it hurts. So, in the life of the priest there is no substitute for leading by example. A priest will credibly preach Christ crucified when the people can see Christ’s wounds in the life of the priest. What does our vocation cost us? What are we freely willing to give? What are the authentic expectations we should have of our priests in their ministry? Are we willing to be challenged by our priests or do we simply want them to entertain us and reinforce our own preferences and prejudices? The message of John of the Cross, both that which he received and that which he preached and continues to preach to us today, is that the suffering of the cross requires us to love others and that love includes suffering rejection.

This is very much a part of the renewal of priestly life today and it is at the heart of authentic priesthood. The priest at his ordination hears the bishop speak these words to him. “Accept from the holy people of God the gifts to be offered to Him. Know what you are doing and imitate the mystery you celebrate; model your life on the mystery of the Lord’s cross.” It’s not enough to say Mass, we must open ourselves to be configured to Christ and willing to suffer as He did for the love of people who frequently did not reciprocate His love. As a friend of mine says, “Sometimes our suffering comes not so much from the crosses we carry but from the people who lean on them.”

Advent is that time for preparation and for waiting; not for wasting time but for taking stock of what we have been given to offer in the battle of which Christ speaks in the Gospel of today. As Pope Francis wrote to us in his Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, “Christian triumph is always a cross, yet a cross which is at the same time a victorious banner borne with aggressive tenderness against the assaults of evil. The evil spirit of defeatism is brother to the temptation to separate, before its time, the wheat from the weeds; it is the fruit of an anxious and self-centered lack of trust.”

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.

Chrism Mass 2018

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

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.