[This evening, our brothers in Fourth Theology, made promises in anticipation of their ordinations as deacons next month. We continue to pray for them. This is the homily]

But by the grace of God I am what I am,
and his grace to me has not been ineffective.

Brothers and sisters tonight we hear the word of God in a deep and poignant way as we observe our brothers who will soon be transformed by their ordination to the diaconate. Tonight they make promises that they intend to keep for life.

Keeping a promise for life is a rare enough commodity in our world today. Every day we witness, many of us first-hand, the ephemeral nature of families, marriages, religious vocations. We see the struggles our brothers and sisters around us make in keeping commitments. We all know something of both the statistics and the real human toll those statistics take.

But these men are here to make promises, nevertheless. They stand here tonight; they place their hands on the Book of God’s World. They sign their names on the altar. It is an impressive moment, an everlasting moment in a transitory world.

Perhaps they need a warning, or encouragement, or some sort of fervereno.
Perhaps they do, but I have no such warnings for them tonight.

What I need to say to them, I have already said to them, so tonight I would like to address some challenges to us, all of us, concerning the act they undertake tonight.

What are these men doing? Tonight they are taking the final definitive step in joining their lives to a greater purpose. For years, they have pursued the sometimes flighty specter of vocation. They have studied, prayed, been formed, talked to spiritual directors and counselors, ministered, they have cried and laughed and relaxed and labored and, well frankly, also complained, fought, grumbled, procrastinated, doubted and shirked responsibilities. They have, in other words, been fully human and yet, tonight, they are proposing to unite that humanity to God’s will in a bond that cannot be broken. They propose to become deacons and then priests and there is no more exalted calling to which they respond because there is no greater need in the world than the need for what they will give in their future ministry. Can they do it on their own? No …
But by the grace of God they are what they are,
and his grace to them has not been ineffective.

Look to these men, because, tonight in a public act they are asking us to look to them.

Look to these men and see in them icons of God’s love, his love poured out in the sacrificial offering of Christ. Look at their frail and winsome personalities and see the torn body of our Lord. Look at their embattled spirits and see his life sweated in the blood of Gethsemane

Look to these men and see in them the possibility of an eternal commitment, of a lasting promise, of a reversal of all the sad history of brokenness and the bitter pain wrought by infidelity.

Look to these men and find in them your inspiration and hope, If you are a seminarian, seek to be what they have become. In their promises, they are pledging to be your guides and mentors, to offer you an example of what is possible.
For by the grace of God they are what they are,
and his grace to them has not been ineffective.

Look to these men and seek in their faces God’s promise, God’s fidelity, God’s pledge of eternal presence. See in them your own dreams for they are bearers of the dream of all humanity. See in them the joy of Christ instead of the bitterness and rancor of the world. See in them the peace of God rather than the eternal strife of the spirit, see in them love. They want to be ambassadors of love in a hate strewn landscape. They are loving men, we all know that. But united if God’s love they become more than what they might have been.

Look to these men and see the Church, its ancient history and its ancient wounds professed in words that echo down the corridors of time in every human language. I believe in One God.

Look to these men and see all our brothers and sisters who hunger for dignity and bread, who labor under the yoke of tyranny, who are beset by violence, who are besieged by terrorism, who are controlled by addictions, who are torn by every kind of ism. See the worn eyes of the starving mother cradling her child, see the broken hands of the migrant worker unjustly paid, see the tired feet of the fleeing refugee.

See God in them because by their promise tonight, that is what they want to show.
That there is something more important in life than the passing flotsam and jetsam of seminary politics.
What an amazing vision and so it is good that
by the grace of God they are what they are,
and his grace to them has not been ineffective.

Tonight these men make promises for life, they are icons for us but I challenge all of us here to also make promises to them. Perhaps our deacon promises should be less about what they do and more about what we do.

Let us make an oath of fidelity to them, an oath to hold them accountable in every way for the promises they make. An oath to scrutinize their actions for any vestiges of half-heartedness or hypocrisy

Let us make a Profession of Faith with them, faith that they can be what they have been called to be, that they can persevere, that they can be beacons of faith, hope and love in a darkened world. And faith that we will love them, stand by them and support them.

Let us bond their Declaration of Freedom to our own as each of us, in his or her own way, continue to pursue the King of Love, the Prince of Peace, the Spirit of Joy, the God of Wonder with open hearts, clear minds, and grateful spirits

And let us promise to stand with them and
Give thanks to the Lord for he is good
Eucharistia
Give thanks to the Lord for he is good

Brothers and sisters, give thanks to the Lord for he is good, in calling these men, these frail, sinful, amazing, heroic men who stand before us tonight to proclaim with us ...

But by the grace of God I am what I am,
and his grace to me has not been ineffective.

[Our celibacy formation program, Together in One Place, was inaugurated with a day of prayer yesterday evening and today. Fr. Raymond Studzinski, OSB delivered the conferences on "Celibacy in the Life Cycle" I made my opening comments last night. Here they are.]

Together in One Place Conference - 2008
1When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues[a] as the Spirit enabled them.


This evening I would like to spend a bit of time meditating on this opening passage from the Second Chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. This passage is an account of the birth of the Church. It teaches us quite a lot about what it means to be Church and, hopefully, how we can live the reality of the Church more fully together in this place.

Whether we are talking about the Gospel or the Acts of the Apostles, with Saint Luke there is always careful attention to detail. The Revelation is frequently in the details of the stories. We learn, for example, from Chapter One of Acts, that the gathering place of the disciples and Mary is the same upper room that Jesus used for the last supper. This is Luke’s way of drawing a close connection between the event of the last supper and the birth of the Church. For Luke there is a bond between the Eucharist and the founding of the Church. This understanding is echoed in the patristic axiom that the Eucharist makes the Church. The sacrifice of the altar and the paschal banquet as a single act constitutes the Church, it makes us who we are, it gives us our reason for being, our strength and that is the energy, fire of Pentecost. For Luke there is no compromising the centrality of the Eucharist as source and summit and this connection also gives us insight into what the Eucharist does. We witness this also, for example, in the paradigmatic story of the Gospel, the account of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. While it is true that the Eucharist nourishes us as individuals, it is more profoundly true that the Eucharist makes us something other than JUST ourselves. It makes us a part of something. It makes us a member of the body of Christ. It unites us with all the others in the Church. It creates community through communion. In his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, Pope Benedict notes that the broken fragments of the Eucharistic Christ desire nothing more than to make themselves one again. Our individual receptions of Holy Communion make us inextricably bound, one to the other. Community is forged in the fire of communion, in the Sacrament of Love and so there is a close bond between the Last Supper and Pentecost. As St. Augustine remarks, when we gather we do not gather as Christians but as Christ. This is the fruit of the Eucharist and this is what is revealed in Pentecost. As St. Augustine remarks in another place: I am your food, but instead of me being changed into you. You are changed into Me.

Furthermore, the realization of the Body of Christ is in a real body. Pope Pius XII in his encyclical, MYSTICI CORPORIS CHRISTI , remarks that: “they err in a matter of divine truth, who imagine the Church to be invisible, intangible, a something merely "pneumatological" as they say, by which many Christian communities, though they differ from each other in their profession of faith, are untied by an invisible bond.” The Body of Christ, the Church, is real and, if we are honest, occasionally messy. The apostles undoubtedly demonstrated this Truth in spades. They were real men, a mixed bag of the good, the bad and the ugly. All of them were very different from one another, they had different backgrounds, different temperaments, different interests and goals and yet God brought them together in one place. Some of them were bright, some less so. Some of them were gentle, others less so. Some of them were talented, others less so. None of that mattered in the long run, because Christ called THEM to found the Church. He called THEM, united with his mother to found the Church. It matters not what language we speak, we are the Church. Our ethnic or cultural background is unimportant, we are the Church. Our age is not significant, we are the Church. Our past lives are not definitive, we are the Church. We are the Church, configured together in one place and together in one place we experience the power of the Church, if we are open to it.

Now, what does all of this have to do with us? What does all of this have to do with the reason we are gathered here tonight? In other words, what does this have to do with celibacy formation?
Our larger task here at Saint Meinrad is the same as that of the apostles and Mary on the Day of Pentecost. We are called to build the Church. We are not called to practice building the Church. We are not called to experiment with building the Church. A seminary is not like a medical school where we practice on cadavers until they get it right. Here, we are already engaging the pastoral commission of Christ to build the Church. This is our upper room. This is our Pentecost. Tonight I would like to focus on how we accomplish this by proposing five practices that will benefit the building of the body of Christ in this place.

The first practice is the practice of concentration, of being here. In my opening remarks to the new seminarians this year, I offered them a challenge. I challenged them to be here. When we come to the seminary, we do not put our former lives behind completely. Ties to family and friends, to communities and to parishes remain. They must remain. Just as the disciples did not become some sort of superhuman persons in order to follow Christ as disciples so we come, as the words of the old Baptist hymn says: Just as we are. We do not leave everything behind but we must resolve to be here as our first priority in realizing the building of the Church. The first, and perhaps the most important, lesson you will learn here is how to build community, build the Church, and build the Body of Christ, under adverse conditions. It is a skill you will be implementing for the rest of your life. You did not choose the people you are living with, praying with, studying with. Likewise, you will not choose who your future parishioners or community members are. Some of the men here will become your lifelong friends, some will become worthy acquaintances, some you will not be able to connect with at all. Living in the community of faith and building the community of faith is not about our personal likes and dislikes, it is about realizing a vision, the Body of Christ, living and breathing among you. These men are your brothers, the good, the bad and the ugly. Learn to love them and when you learn that, you will build the body of Christ, build the Church. Fail to learn that and you will never succeed. To realize this love, you must be here with all your heart and strength. You must learn to depend on your formators, your spiritual guides, and your teachers. You must listen to them. Obedience begins here. It begins now. It begins in this place and not in a distant and yet unrealized future. Be here and thrive here. Give yourself to God here and the Church will be within your grasp. If we fail to be here, we might fall into what I call missed connection syndrome. The Church is being built around me as I speak, but I am left in the cold, distantly looking on, waiting for something to happen.

The second practice we need to cultivate is the practice of ardor. Once we have determined that we have to be here in order for anything to happen, we must then learn to stay here. Ardor means that I am willing to suspend my immediate judgment about the good and the usefulness of what I encounter at Saint Meinrad in order to see how the greater order and the greater good unfolds. Ardor means that I stay the course with these people in spite of the fact that it may not always be comfortable to me, to my liking, to my sense of pleasure or gratification. Ardor means a zeal for formation, even when I can’t sense the immediate meaning of formation and, again, it is built upon a trust for the formation staff and the pastors. If we cannot trust, we cannot ultimately love. If we fail to stay here, we might fall victim to what I call “grass is greener” syndrome. I am always longing for something better, something more ideal. I am always on the lookout for the place that suits me, in every way, a better upper room, a more perfect Pentecost. The grass is always greener in the next place, at the next assignment, in the next parish, until I reach at last the only satisfactorily green place, the cemetery.
The third practice we need to cultivate is the practice of submission, living here. We must first resolve to be here, then to stay here and then to live here, to really live here. Really living in a place means I put my whole body and whole soul in a place. In invest in it as something that is mine, or more profoundly, ours. I throw in my lot with these people, I give the place and the people the benefit of the doubt. We can never truly build the body of Christ in a place where I do not fully live. I must become generative in this place. I must look for ways to make others grow as well as challenge myself to grow. I must become a person who looks for possibilities, for means of adapting, for making others welcome, for being attentive to their needs. If I fail to do this, I might fall victim to what I call, seminarian as zombie syndrome. He is here, and he is going through the motions, but he has no soul and this no future.
The fourth practice is listening. I must learn to pay attention to what is happening in the lives of my brothers here. I must listen to what they have to say, even when I cannot appreciate what they have to say. If I am truly listening then I am learning to love. I must learn to love. Listening is at the heart of fraternal love and that is what I am called to, fraternal love, not fraternal tolerance, not fraternal indifference, but fraternal love and that has a cost. These frail men and women, and I point to the seminarians, the staff, everyone, are all worthy, infinitely worthy of your love because they are Christ. In the upper room of this seminary, his great mysterious presence calls us to see that. Fraternal love means mutual independence. Fraternal love means caring enough to challenge. Fraternal love means embracing idiosyncrasies. Fraternal love cannot exist in an atmosphere of hatred, of grudges, of reproach, bitterness, of self-righteousness, of jealousy, or recrimination, of judgment about character, of gossip, of rumors, of isolation, of exclusive friendships, of imprudent humor and ill-conceived alliances. Fraternal love thrives in gentleness, kindness, patience, acceptance, compassionate speech, physical support, friendship, broadness of mind, spirit, intellect and a helping disposition. Fraternal love builds priestly intimacy. Priestly intimacy sustains the vocation of the priest, not merely because it makes celibacy possible, but because the cultivation of its virtues tells the priest who he truly is, what kind of man he is. If I fail to listen, I may become a victim of what I call frigid servant syndrome. I am here, I am involved, I am responding, but I don’t really care. I do what I do, but I am ultimately indifferent. Hoop jumping is a dangerous sport and not really conducive to the fitness of the body of Christ.
The final practice for building the Body of Christ is the cultivation of the sense of mystery, of understanding this reality which is central to our faith: Things are not always what they seem to be. This is true in the Eucharist. It is true in the Word of God, the scriptures and it is true in each one of us. In order to be true to the order of faith we must be willing to be drawn into the mystery of God expressed in each one of us, as well as in the scriptures, in the sacraments and in the body of believers. We must learn to look at everyone here and say, he or she is more than what they seem to be, more than what I can imagine them to be, more than meets the eye. We must train our souls to look for the deep and inexhaustible meaning in every man, woman and child we encounter. We must train our hearts to look for the deep and inexhaustible meaning in the brothers and sisters gathered together here. When mystery becomes our grounding principle everything here will come convincingly into focus. Until mystery becomes our grounding principle, everything here will be judged only by what it does for me. When we learn the mysterious language of Christian love, love for the body of Christ, love for the Eucharist, love for one another, then we will learn the fire of building up, we will learn to embrace that Pentecostal fire that forges rather than destroys.

What does any of this have to do with celibacy formation? The answer is yes.

1When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues[a] as the Spirit enabled them.