In the beginning, God had a dream.
Like all parents, God looked at his children, found them good and dreamed for them.
Human parents, undoubtedly have many dreams for their sons and daughters.
Dreams of success, of achievement, of happiness,
Dreams of becoming something more than they, the parents, had been.
A little girl is already walking down the aisle on her birthday
A little boy is already pitching his first no hitter before he can stand upright
Parents dream for their children
God dreamed too for Adam and Eve and, perhaps unlike human parents, God’s dream was simple and it was this: That they would say “yes”.
God dreamed that Adam and Eve would say yes to the paradise He offered them.
God dreamed that those first two would say “yes” to God’s love and companionship.
God dreamed that their “yes” would engender many ages of fulfillment, promise, wonder.
Human parents know, however, that seldom do their dreams for the children come true, at least not in the way they imagined. And so it was with God. Adam and Eve didn’t say “yes”.
They refused the Father’s love, denied the paradise he created for them and their resounding “no” to God has echoed down the corridors of time, bouncing off the walls of human folly, engendering itself into the very fiber of our existence.
That “no” to God became the inheritance of that first son. It became original to us. It taught us to squander promise, and deny hope. That “no” became the marker of a fallen race, a desperate people. Inheritors of the first sin, time and again we broke God’s offer of reconciliation, in the covenant of the rainbow, the covenant of blood, in the law and prophets, we heard God’s plea for a “yes” and with the stubbornness of a three year old who has just learned the word, we said “no”.
But still God’s dream could not be stilled. God dared to keep dreaming, even in the face of persistent and absolute disappointment.
Until one day, he saw an opportunity and in the frenzy of beating wings and the cacophony of light, God’s dream was uttered again, to a simple girl, one of the low of the earth, a slave of men’s expectations. And here is the miracle. Mary said. “yes”. And God sighed.
That “yes” uttered so long ago in a dark and sullen place of human existence, resounds today. That Word continues to give hope and promise to a people mired in their own self-seeking, their own sordidness. That Word continues to gain momentum in a world weighed down by a lack of promise, a deficiency of peace, a dearth of faith, a scarcity of hope.
And that “yes”, Mary’s “yes” has translated itself into countless languages, spoken by people of every color, every culture. It is spoken in the accents of the poor and the neglected of every society. That “yes” has become the universal symbol of hope, of purity, of the future. That “yes” is celebrated here, today on this altar, as a Word which cannot be silenced, a Word we inherit and consume and take to a tired world. It is the yes to conquer all no’s, out there and in here, in our hearts, our worn minds. And God’s dream is realized, in Mary and in us. In the beginning, God had a dream, and that beginning is today, is now, is here. Happy are those who are called to this altar.
-
A voice cries out in the wilderness.
Have you ever thought that John the Baptist is a lot like Santa Claus?
John the Baptist is there as a precursor to the message of Jesus.
For weeks before the arrival of Christmas, Santa Claus invades the collective imaginations (not to mention the malls and department stores) of the whole world.
John the Baptist goes into the desert to announce the coming of the messiah
Santa Claus is a herald, not of the Kingdom’s in breaking among us, but of the arrival of the commercial onslaught of Christmas consumerism.
Like John the Baptist, Santa Claus is also scary
When I was a kid, thought of Santa Claus was enough to send me into convulsions.
Red suit
Red eyes
Tangled beard
Foul breath
Virtus nightmare, St. Nick was and …
Well frankly, I was an evil child.
I was usually naughty and frequently crying or pouting.
So, this time of year was always fraught with danger
The very sight of Santa Claus in a department store or mall would send me howling
Still does
Forget about cute little pictures.
To me, Santa was an unwanted voyeur into my little life of sin and I resented him and his list
John the Baptist was a threat to the complacency of Israel.
He had no problem showing the chosen people a detailed list of their transgressions and calling them to a new reality
They were disturbed by his presence, and frankly so are we
Camel suit
Fiery eyes
Tangled beard
Grasshopper breath
John the Baptist isn’t exactly the kind of fellow your granny would have invited to tea.
Repent
Renew
Revision
He called them and he calls us to realize that we have been bad children, since the time of the first apple pie, we have been on the downturn.
Humanity is usually naughty and frequently crying or pouting.
This time of anticipation, therefore, must be fraught with danger
Brothers and sisters, there is menace in the Gospel.
There is an insidious threat in these Gospel readings of Advent that somehow over the years we have sanitized into saccharine little images of sanctity that better suit our domesticated versions of the divine reality.
But in essence, John the Baptist was a political agitator, something of a zealot, a religious fanatic, more akin to the reckless, almost suicidal denizens of a terrorist cell or some fanatic holed up in Montana than the kindly seminarians, priests, religious and other folk of southern Indiana.
There is danger here, in going out to the desert, in listening to revolutionary thought, in daring to call out Divine names, in threatening cultural upheaval
And in the other Gospels of advent as well, subversive prophecy of political anarchy, unwed motherhood, refugees. Mountains being leveled, valleys filled in, the landscape of the human condition transformed by violent means
And calls to action
Up, Jerusalem! stand upon the heights;look to the east
Coming full circle and confronting my childhood fears, I wonder if we have not robbed our faith, particularly our advent faith of some of its raw energy, by making it well nice instead of naughty
Perhaps we have scrubbed everything up in hopes of domesticating God.
Perhaps we think we can tame the almighty a bit by painting him in pastel shades and putting him under the Christmas tree, tinseling him up, lighting him in twinkling lights
When, in fact, the message of the Gospel is a message that should probably make us a little paranoid.
In the past months, we have come into this deserted place to hear a voice of prophecy, speaking to each of us in his own way, calling us to a new way of life, to a new realization of the Kingdom.
Have we heard it? Have we been threatened by it?
It is nothing less, my brothers and sisters, than a call to take the reality of God seriously
A reality that does threaten our complacency
Our very idea of the good and the nice
Our comfortability with ourselves and others
We must see God as something more than Santa Claus, who rewards us if we are nice and punishes us if we are naughty.
We must see God as more than an overgrown elf who distributes favors and then conveniently disappears for a year.
Advent is a time for stirring the pot, shaking the branches
It is also a time to wake up and smell the disturbing aroma of conversion wafting on the winter wind
Likewise, this seminary community.
We must be changed by our experience in this deserted place
Up, Jerusalem! stand upon the heights;look to the east and see your childrengathered from the east and the westat the word of the Holy One,rejoicing that they are remembered by God.
Remembered by God, a dangerous act of anamnesis.
And that remembrance,, like this remembrance we celebrate here, is not safe, but calls us to witness, calls us to sanctity, calls us to confound our pouting and shouting cries of preparation as we stand upon the heights,
Looking to the east
The west
Gathering
Fathering
Rejoicing at the Word of God.
Brothers and sisters, we need to hear that message
A message, clamoring message of renewal invading our bones, penetrating our minds,
We need that message of renewal right in the heart of this community and Jesus in his advent, in his explosive coming among us, is that message.
Even as the world is turning its jaundiced eye to the holy night of peace, the little town of Bethlehem sleeping insipiently in the glow of the golden arches and blue light specials, we recognize that we do not live in a world of peace
But a world of war
of violence
of hatred
of threat
of death
of lack of respect
And so words of peace and pacifism, gestures of hope, signs of kindness become contradictions
Our pacifism is violence to a world of violence
our goodness, threatening to a world of sin
our kindness is DANGEROUS to a world of fear mongering, materialism, and apathy.
His message of peace is dangerous and we embrace it willingly as the world’s only hope, and its greatest enemy.
In the cold winter, in the darkness of night, the people tremble in the shadows, but hope dawns
A Voice in the distance, calls in the night, On wind he enfold us and speaks of endless day
That’s dangerous
Gentle on the ears he whispers softly,
Rumors of a dawn so embracing,
Breathless love awaits darkened souls,
Soon will we know of the revolutionary morning.
Perhaps advent is more dangerous than we thought for we, sisters and brothers, are the inheritors of that menacing promise announced by the wild man of the desert, we are the people of that promise
And here is the place of that promise. And this is the community of that promise and we are its representatives for the world flooded by the empty delusion of indifference and pain and crimes of the heart and sin, crass Clausian materialism, cyncism, doubt.
A voice cries out in the wilderness prepare the way. It is our voice, our collective voice strengthened by the body of Christ.
Up, Jerusalem! stand upon the heights;look to the east and see your childrengathered from the east and the westat the word of the Holy One,rejoicing that they are remembered by God. -
We sing of God, immortal yet among us
His body broken here as on the cross
His blood poured out, a sacrifice unequaled
Eternal Word, contained in signs of loss
O mystery, O sacrament most holy
On bended knees, we worship and adore
A world of sin, a legacy of hatred
He bled and died our life, our hope to claim
Enduring shame and agony relentless
For our salvation, Christ the Lord was slain
O mystery, O sacrament most holy
On bended knees we worship and adore
From age to age, this sacrifice unending
In lives destroyed by poverty and fear
His body lives in beating hearts so lowly
And death has died, in place a love so near
O mystery, O sacrament most holy
On bended knees we worship and adore
In every land, in every race and language
In hearts unborn, in faces aged and worn
The God of love, in countless incarnations
His gracious voice in endless echoes born
O mystery, O sacrament most holy
On bended knees we worship and adore
Believers all, bow down in awe and wonder
The King of Glory breaks into this place
Forgiving all our sin and lack of courage
Removing all our guilt with his great grace
O mystery, O sacrament most holy
On bended knees we worship and adore
Come Men of Christ, present your lives in service
His flesh and blood, his sacrifice to share
Our bodies broken on here upon the altar
Our blood poured out, to heal the world’s despair
O mystery, O sacrament most holy
On bended knees we worship and adore -
This is the homily that opened our Forty Hours Devotion on Sunday evening
I was sitting in O’Hare on Thursday evening thinking about the end times, the Day of the Lord. It was filled with souls. An elderly couple sat indifferently at opposite ends of a banquette. A man in plaid shorts looked confusedly at the departure information located at Gate C6. A little girl in red velvet ran furiously away from her father, laughing in uproarious voice. A little boy in a Yankees hat cradled a hot fudge Sunday from McDonalds. An Asian couple fed french-fries to one another from a bag from the same franchise. A woman in a smart suit stared ahead without blinking. Two flight attendants chatted amiably. A solitary man in a wool sweater read a book about population control. A twenty something woman with long hair and a long face read a fashion magazine. A mother and daughter in matching pink coats walk arm in arm. A young man stumbled on the moving sidewalk. The moving sidewalk was ending and he did not look down. An elderly woman sat passively in a wheelchair and a middle aged priest typed furiously on a laptop.
These were/are the people of thanksgiving. These were/are the teeming masses of humanity that move fatefully from Chicago to Kansas City, to St. Louis, to London, to Sao Paulo.
These were/are the people of thanksgiving hurtling through the dark night at great speed, transcending the bounds of nature to “be there”.
And they know it and they do not know it.
They know that in their hearts they search, they seek, they inquire after a reality that they dare not, perhaps cannot name.
They know that life is difficult, often seemingly purposeless.
They know that there are disappointments, in marriages, in work, in children in the general flow of living.
They often do not know where they are heading, even as they clutch tightly to boarding passes, metaphorical or not.
They often do not know who they are, even as they share their picture IDs with strangers in order to get where they do not know they are going.
They often do not know what makes it all meaningful, what gives step to the little girl’s flight and insight to the priest’s typing.
And so it is with us all, forever, peripatetic, moving, progressing, in transit. We know and we do not know.
We know that we are here, caught up in the matrix of what is termed living.
We may not know that our lives, all of our lives, all of our brave beautiful lives are tied whirlwind into a mystery.
It is the mystery of this season and of this sacrament.
For even as the air vibrates with the finality of the last days, punctuated by the poignancy of unknown thanksgivings, the first days are already engendering themselves in the loins of Creation.
In the midst of decay and denegation, of aimlessness and restlessness, of the perpetual going nowhere, a tiny heart begins to beat faintly in the womb of a woman whose audacious yes whirls around us like the wind, and calls the birds home and renews these days with the promise of child cries echoing down the corridors of time. Child cries that ring like the triumph of the King of Kings.
Just as we are ending, we are beginning and thus we become entangled in the great cycle of Grace, God’s infinite plan of judgment and reconciliation, division and reunion
Just as the sheep are separated from goats, they are summoned back to the one flock by the call of the infant shepherd cascading across the hills.
Calling us in milk and honey tones to a new world, a new life, a new vocation, a new day.
and so
In the midst of a fallen season, we look for a brighter promise
A day when alienation is unknown and we can collapse into the apocotastasis of pure beatitude.
Now I will tell you the whole mystery: That Day is here.
The Alpha and Omega, the One who governs all things, who proceeds and gives flight to all time is here, sheltering himself in the moon of our adoration.
The Lord of the World has gathered strength and power in himself by insinuating himself into the Host who calls all pilgrims to the shrine of his purpose
The creator of history is here, having given flesh to himself in the midst of the huddled masses transported and transporting through the miracle of thanksgiving itself, Eucharistia.
The God of the universe has come to us in this singular way in these cold days and nights
In this sacrament of his love
Of his grace
Of his person
Of his history
Of his purpose
And it is this sacrament and this sacrament only that keeps the world from flying apart.
He does this and we do not know. We do not know. At least we do not know all
Brothers and sisters, here is the truth. There is nothing in this place, in this great transitional gate of life that is good and true, nothing beautiful, nothing good complete, except this sacramental presence. We are consumed by Him whom we consume. And thus we know him a little and we worship him
Down in adoration falling, this great sacrament we hail
Faith will tell us Christ is present, when our human senses fail
And so I am standing in the St. Thomas Aquinas Chapel Sunday evening and it is filled with souls. A man is worried about his final exams. A man is ridden with guilt for a past sin. A man’s stomach rumbles with more than physical hunger. A man wonders how long. A priest is concerned about the salvation of his little flock. A seminarian is intrigued by the haircut of another one. Another is consumed with doubt about his vocation. Another is worried about a sister, a parent. Another was concerned about the certainty of God’s love. Another was anxious for the outcome of his prayer. Another, his integrity, another his ability to love, another, a sacrifice he must make. Another is concerned about obedience, another about celibacy, another his health, another and another.
And they all are here. And they see the alpha and omega, the Lord of the World, the creator of history, the God of the Universe. They see him and adore.
And in this adoration we find direction to our lives.
And we become in our adoration, ostensoriae of Christ for an aimless, transitional world. -
I have a problem with gambling
I am against it
In fact I abhor it
Old ladies nickeling and diming their social security away in slot machines
Lottery tickets
Bingo games run amuck
Family’s incomes being swallowed up in online addictions
The whole culture of gambling is laden with subversive greed, the desire to get more, make more, have more.
I have never gambled in my life.
Perhaps its because I am cheap
More likely it is a remnant of unredeemed fundamentalist religion
Fine. Whatever. I can live with that.
Jesus, however, as we might expect, has a slightly skewed perspective
In the cosmic game of chance, Jesus says, go for broke
Give away, Jesus says
Don’t hold back
Bet the bank and never look over your shoulder
Don’t flinch poker face
There is no need to because, ultimately when we gamble everything on God, we are not gambling. We always win.
And yet, like the servants, we hold back, putting our lives in a handkerchief
We fail to give God everything, absolutely everything
Out of fear, out of faithlessness, out of selfishness
We hold back
Nickeling and diming the slot machines of fortune and blessing
Clutching to our chests the chips of grudges, old hurts, prejudice, sour dispositions
Bingoing our way into oblivion.
Because, in all our hearts is a dead place that like a stone keeps us from soaring up to God
Jesus says: Cut it out. Put it on the table
In our spirits is a leaden earthboundedness and Jesus says: Dare to soar! Pull the handle
Give up your life and you will truly learn how to live
Sacrifice yourself completely to the service of your brothers and sisters and learn the meaning of authentic discipleship
Root out all the cheapness in your character and bet everything on his grace
Roll the dice of indifference to power, wealth, youth, materialism.
The doubles sixes of the eschaton are yours
Take all the cards and God will give you a full house of joy, wonder, anticipation, freedom
Bet all on His Grace and your life will be transmogrified with the sure thing of God’s compassion and invitation.
Whatever we hold back is all we will ever have., and we will be faced with the prospect of single-coining our way into eternity.
Jesus knew all of this because he was taking the ultimate chance.
He continued on his way to Jerusalem.
All of us have taken a chance in coming here, in being here, in giving up here.
And in the sacrifices we make, God does not stint on giving us everything, even his body and blood, even his very life on this altar.
Gamble everything, Jesus says, and you will win.
You can bet on it. -
We are unprofitable servants;we have done what we were obliged to do.
I have to tell you that I am not that into “nice” restaurants. Haute Cuisine is completely lost on me. Give me a good old buffet anytime. Occasionally, however, the job calls me to dine rather than feed and I find myself in some rather upscale establishments. And frankly I am bewildered. The evening usually goes something like this. The waiter tells us what is being served. “Our feature this evening is ratt tatt tatt of pork on a bed of curls of celery, prepared with a foi gras foam and an infusion of slivered bamboo.” Now, I can assure you I have no idea what that is but when it arrives two hours later I am surprised to find a huge white plate with what looks like a raw slice of meat the size of a nickel and an artistically placed piece of dental floss. This is food as art and the art of the day is minimalist. Needless to say on the way home, Arby’s is on the agenda. Why? Because I’m fat and I’m hungry.
Minimalism may be haute cuisine and it may be art, but it ain’t discipleship. Jesus chastises the disciples who only do the minimum, just enough to eek in the side door of salvation. That’s enough for us they say. Jesus upbraids them for their lack of initiative, their lack of creativity, their mendacity. Why? Turn to Sirach
God formed man to be imperishable;the image of his own nature he made them.
By the devil the death of minimalism entered the world.
Catholics are plagued by minimalism. How much do I need to do to achieve my ticket to heaven? Just give me the basics please; too much spiritual food may give me indigestion. How many classes do I have to attend? I want to get married, not become a nun. How long is mass on Sunday? 17 minutes is all I have for God. Just show me the hoops, Father, I can jump, just not too high
And sometimes we leaders can send out the message that all of this Catholic stuff is really not too demanding. Just show up every once in a while, pray a little, confess a little, and drop a little something in the basket.
And little by little we eat away at the substance of our faith. Minimally, we grow smaller and smaller until we despair of the bounty of God. And then we despise religion for its meagerness like a restaurant that has the audacity to serve dental floss to hungry people.
But here is the truth. God is big, God is huge, God is everything and we must be careful that we do not pare down the overwhelming reality of God, a reality in which we are created, in which we hope, in which we dream, in which we long to live, into an entrée that cannot satisfy.
Here is the truth of God, the richness of this altar. Bring it on. Belly up to the buffet sisters and brothers. Let’s get fat on the largess of the Kingdom. Mind your manners, true, but don’t be too picky. God isn’t. After all he created and called us to lives of spiritual excess, overflow, abundance, so let it not be said of us:
We are unprofitable servants;we have done what we were obliged to do. -
After this I had a vision of a great multitude ...
Lively
Lame
Athletic
Frightening
Crippled
Worn
Lovely
Sad
Pathetic
Worried
Withered
Torn
Lowly
Small
Majestic
Blind
Diseased
Sustained
Loved
Unloved
Incarnate
Word in Church Proclaimed
These are the saints
Meek, mourning, merciful, mendicant, maligned
Our Fathers venerated veterans vibrant in their wisdom and depth of understanding
Our Mothers tender and wise in ways beyond comparing
Our Sisters gathering, gathering endlessly the concerns of a ravaged world into the folds of wimples and veils, the inner reaches of prayer
Our brothers toiling hours and hours in anonymous fields, laboring for the Kingdom they see and the Heaven they cannot yet see
And they are living still, like their faith in spite of dungeon, fire and sword
The dungeon of faded memory
The fire of cynicism
The sword of secularization
They are living yet
In every act of charity unselfishly united to the sacrifice of Christ
In every muttered, uttered prayer reserved for the heart, the heart of the Savior
In acts heroic and challenged, in blood shed carelessly in love, in fortitude
In depths unsung and un heralded that make the difference between life and death
In goodness that glows on the skin like the remnants of summer sunshine
In love patient and passionate poured out without regard to cost or care or concern, compassion careening off the caryatids of this world’s pillars
In the face of the wounded one, the face of Jesus crying, smiling, laughing, sustaining in our midst
They are martyrs boldly axed
Confessors rightly syllogized
Virgins singing sweetly
Husbands huddling wives and children
Wives nursing, nurturing
Children wildly trumpeting
Lovers softly cooing
Students diligent and earnest
Teachers wise and wondrous
Races bound together in common acts of worship and sustenance
Nations venerating nations in acts of love over acts of war
Tongues clucking, clicking strange syllables that sound like praise
People, So many people, so many radiant people
And they are calling out to us today, on their feast
Calling us higher into the very mists of mysticism
Calling us into the very heights of incomparable compassion
Calling us deeper into the sinews of God’s own heart
Calling us beyond ourselves and into that corporate community of care, concern, companionship, communion
To Rise above the materially mundane, the mendacic
To Climb imperiously upon the shoulders of angels, ancestors, our elect antecedents
To join in their ascent to the very throne of God
Why?
Because brothers and sisters, this is our home, our homeland, our heritage, inheritance
We are not made for the ground from which we came; we are wondrously, gloriously made for angel choirs
We are made for the brilliant shimmering shook light of a city of adamant and crystal, not the murky sulfurs of a confining earthboundedness
We are made for clarion voices, united in the thundering timbre of the Trisagion, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Hosts
We are made for incandescence, the air of transcendence and not the acrid atmosphere of animosity, rancor
We are made for Him who made himself us for us, who made himself base for us, who made himself death for us, so that we might become saints, rising on his baseness, living on his death
Beloved, we are God’s children now;what we shall be has not yet been revealed
When it is revealed we shall know
The saints are not our fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers alone, they are us. Church triumphant in Church militant.
Church sustaining Church
Church interceding for Church
Church enlivening Church
Church inspiring Church
Encapsulating itself, insinuating itself, ingratiating itself, engaging itself in the whole, the corporeality of connectedness, the Body of Christ.
Happy are we drawn here today into this great company, this cloud of witnesses who are what we are and long to be.
After this I had a vision of a great multitude,which no one could count,from every nation, race, people, and tongue.They stood before the throne and before the Lamb,wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands.They cried out in a loud voice:
“Salvation comes from our God, who is seated on the throne,and from the Lamb.” -
Rector’s Conference
September 9, 2009
In my first conference for the opening of this formation year, I indicated that I wanted to focus my talks this semester on the virtues of the priesthood, in particular, on the heroism of priests. This morning, I want to continue that theme by honing on in a particular virtue, the virtue of courage.
Courage, in Latin, fortitudo is a characteristic of the lives of so many priests in the history of our faith. St. Athanasius, for example, was a great example of courage. St. Athanasius fought the Arian heresy, and three times was exiled from his own diocese. He spent years in toil, hardship and imprisonment because he stood up for the Truth. He was reviled and rejected after the example of the Master whom we sought so valiantly to emulate, suffering real deprivation for the sake of Christ and his holy Church. He was certainly a great example of priestly courage and heroism. Likewise, St. Ignatius of Loyola is a great example of priestly courage. He had to overcome a great deal of misunderstanding in order to realize what he considered to be his divine call to found an order of missionaries and priests to support the Church of God in a time of great crisis. In the course of this pursuit he overcame seemingly insurmountable obstacles in order to proclaim the message of the Gospel. Closer to our own time we could look at the example of someone like St. Maximilian Kolbe who had the courage to offer his own life as a sacrifice for the life of another man who was a husband and father in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. Or we could look at the example of Pope John Paul II, who, even before being called by God for heroic service in the Petrine office, experienced tremendous hardships just to become a priest in the days of occupation in Poland in the early 20th century. And of course, in this Year for Priests, we must mention the example of St. John Vianney, a man whose courage and fierce determination saw him through so many trials and difficulties to become at true pastor of souls, a man committed to the daily reality of the priestly office, an office in which he never wavered, never grew weary.
We could go on and on. We could look at examples of priestly courage throughout history of the Church. But, today in order to focus on this issue, this value, this question of the courage of priests, I would like to turn to an older figure. I would like to spend some time reflecting this morning on the priesthood of Melchizedek. Even before the time of Christ, Melchizedek was an example of a priesthood that has since come to fruition in the Incarnation of the Son of God and a priesthood of which we are, today, the inheritors. We are told that we are priests of the Order of Melchizedek.
We often hear this language of Melchizedek, but do we understand, do we know who Melchizedek was and why he continues to offer us a significant example of courage in the priesthood today. In order to comprehend a little more of this, I would like to turn to the Book of Hebrews and I will spend some time this morning reflecting on Hebrews 7:1-10.
This “King Melchizedek of Salem, priest of the Most High God, met Abraham as he was returning from defeating the kings and blessed him”; 2and to him Abraham apportioned “one-tenth of everything.” His name, in the first place, means “king of righteousness”; next he is also king of Salem, that is, “king of peace.” 3Without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God, he remains a priest forever. 4See how great he is! Even Abraham the patriarch gave him a tenth of the spoils. 5And those descendants of Levi who receive the priestly office have a commandment in the law to collect tithes from the people, that is, from their kindred, though these also are descended from Abraham. 6But this man, who does not belong to their ancestry, collected tithes from Abraham and blessed him who had received the promises. 7It is beyond dispute that the inferior is blessed by the superior. 8In the one case, tithes are received by those who are mortal; in the other, by one of whom it is testified that he lives. 9One might even say that Levi himself, who receives tithes, paid tithes through Abraham, 10for he was still in the loins of his ancestor when Melchizedek met him. [NRSV]
In the Book of Hebrews, the work and the identity of Christ are set against the backdrop of Old Testament priesthood. It is important to note, however, that the Old Testament cultic priesthood, the Aaronic priesthood, the Levitical priesthood is not the reality on which the author wants to focus as a precursor to Christ Rather, it is Melchizedek a more archaic figure, a more ancient figure, a figure predating the Aaronic and Levitical priesthood, who becomes the foreshadowing of Christ. The author spends a great deal of time considering the nature of the Old Testament priesthood and how it must be understood. He begins with a long dissertation on the cultic priesthood and for the author, writing to his Jewish audience, the cultic priesthood had everything that priesthood ought to have had. It had its hereditary significance; it had its way of transmitting the priesthood from generation to generation. It had a material culture that surrounded it, the sacrifices, the vestments, the use of the implements, and the place of the sacrifice, the Temple of Jerusalem. But, what the cultic priesthood of ancient Israel did not have according to the Book of Hebrews was effectiveness. This becomes the real key to gaining insight as to where the author wants to go with his discussion of priesthood. There was no effectiveness to the priesthood of ancient Judaism. They offered sacrifices day after day, they sprinkled blood on the altar and the people, but nothing happened. There was nothing that came of it. The author wants to point to the fact that the sacrificial elements of ancient Judaism could not solve the larger problem, we might say the metaphysical problem, faced by the people. For effectiveness we must turn to another image of the priesthood and here the author considers the figure of Melchizedek.
Here I will begin by bringing to light a few features the author of Hebrews wants to point out about the priesthood of Melchizedek. But I think we should also put these features side-by-side with our own understanding of priesthood and hopefully see if the author can point out for us the values that we ought to be representing in the priesthood as it exists in the new dispensation of Jesus Christ. First the priest, Melchizedek, as we find in Hebrews 7:3, was without father, without mother and without genealogy. Genealogy, as we know, within ancient Judaism was something extremely important. Matthew writing to a Jewish audience begins his gospel with a genealogy. The purpose of the genealogy is to establish the credibility of Jesus by placing him within the context of a great hereditary tradition of Judaism. Melchizedek and therefore Christ and therefore Christian priesthood have no genealogy. He has no father or mother. He is not a priest by way of inheritance or by way of family or by way of rights. The Aaronic priesthood and the Levitical priesthood were the right, the birthright of the priest. What the author wants to point out is that within the new dispensation priests do not have a birthright to the priesthood. No one has a right to the priesthood. The priesthood is not something we have inherited; it is not something that we gain by means of our family or our connections. What is the reason then for holding priesthood in the new dispensation? It is by virtue of a well-lived life. It is by virtue of who the priest is. It is by virtue of his character and not of any inherited title. The priesthood in the new dispensation is not a priesthood that carries on because it has been going on for generations; its perpetuation is by virtue of who the individual is. In other words, it is the individual who becomes a priest. He is not merely molded into a group of priests, a common priesthood, rather it is through the individual’s background and gifts and talents and character that the priesthood emerges. Melchizedek acted as a priest to Abraham not because he was forced to or because of the role that he played and not because it was his duty, that is to say, he was not fulfilling one of the courses of priesthood that would later be a quality of the Levitical/Aaronic priesthood, but because of his internal spiritual qualities, his goodness and his charity. This raises a significant image for us in the contemporary Christian priesthood. We are priests because of an internal disposition and an external call. We are not priests by virtue of what we do or how we act, we are priests by virtue of who we are and by the relationship we have with the author of priesthood, God the Father in Jesus Christ.
The treatment of Melchizedek in Hebrews also invites us to look back to his first appearance in the Book of Genesis. According to Genesis 14, Melchizedek was a priest of Salem. Salem was the Canaanite city that is now known as Jerusalem before it became the capital of the southern kingdom. Melchizedek was also a priest of El. El is one of the archaic names for God given in the Book of Genesis. He offers bread and wine to Abraham. In the context of Genesis, Melchizedek, the king of Salem and the priest, offers bread and wine as opposed to what the Sodomites failed to offer Abraham, that is, hospitality. Melchizedek offers hospitality where the people of Sodom did not; and, he blessed Abraham. He was king of Salem and a priest; here we begin to see the first clue according to Hebrews as to how Melchizedek was a foreshadowing of Christ. He was both the king and the priest. He had dominion over both the temporal world, the affairs of the world, and over the spiritual world. Melchizedek brings together in one individual both that which is temporal, we might say that which is human, and that which is spiritual, that is to say divine—humanity and divinity together in his dual role of king and priest, the temporal and the spiritual, the incarnational nature of Melchizedek. He appears from nowhere and he disappears. The only encounter we have is this short chapter in Genesis. But, he is a priest forever as we hear in Psalm 110 and as we hear repeatedly throughout the various passages from the New Testament where his name in invoked. His priesthood has no beginning and no end in the same way that the second person of the Holy Trinity has no beginning and no end. The divine reality has no beginning and no end. He is a priest forever. He has, therefore, an ability to stand in for humanity, not by virtue of law but by an act of charity. Here again we see that formulation of the Christological image which is going to be so significant for the author of Hebrews. Jesus Christ comes to us not by virtue of law, he is not compelled to do so by the Father, but by an act of love, an act of charity, the ultimate act of charity. “A greater love has no man than to lay down his life for his friends” (John 15,13). He wants to save humanity. Melchizedek, like Christ, did not have to offer the sacrifice like the Aaronic and Levitical priests, but his charity is welcomed by Abraham and for his charity he receives the spoils of war. War here in Hebrews and perhaps also in Genesis is not so much to be understood as temporal warfare but a kind of eschatological or spiritual warfare. The message here is that spiritual warfare is to be resolved not by an act of war but rather by an act of love, charity. The “goods” of this world are conquered by love. The priesthood of Melchizedek and Christ is superior to the priesthood of the Levites because it is chosen in love and it does not proceed from obligation.
In Hebrews, there are three images that are presented concerning the function and the nature of Jesus’ work and following from that the function and nature of our own being and work. The three images are the Temple, the bridegroom, and the sacrifice. These three images form the context of understanding what Jesus did and who he was and also a context for forming an image of what we do and who we are. If we look at the ministry of Christ, his salvific ministry, his ministry of redemption, we learn that Christ is the temple. The cultic action of Israel was highly localized in the temple in Jerusalem. Its priests were part time. They served two weeks a year and spent the rest of their time at home pursuing whatever livelihood they had. Hebrews 8:1-2 turns the tables on this reality and gives us a very powerful image. “We have such a high priest, who has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, a minister of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle that the Lord, not man, set up” Christ is the priest and the temple. Not made by human hands. Not subject to change. Not subject to destruction. This is the same image found in St. John’s Gospel, “Destroy this temple and I will raise it in three days”(John 2,19). He is the temple. Within our context those conformed in the person of Christ, priests, likewise, are the temple. With this image the author is presenting us with the possibility that those who serve in the Christian priesthood are serving within the context of their own person. The cultic zone, the religious space of Israel has been blown apart and Christ roaming about the earth in his omnipresent reality brings the temple to every place, to homes, to parking lots, to shopping centers, to the most exalted palace, to the lowest ghetto. Priesthood in our setting is not something that is set apart from the world but rather it is lived concretely within the context of the world. We are not like those who dwell imperiously in the temple on top of the hill and then every once in awhile in a cloud of incense and unknowing descend and ascend. Jesus was not one who set himself apart from his world, with the temple representing the concrete reality of the world; Jesus was one who went into the world. Jesus was part of the world. He took the temple with him. There was no division between him and the work he performed. What we get here is a powerful image of how we are to be. One of the great delineations of our contemporary culture is the idea that we live in two spheres, the sacred and the secular. The author of Hebrews drives home this message: In Christ there is no place set apart for the worship of God; ultimately the World is the Temple. As Fr. Von Balthasar mentions in his book on prayer: “The Son comes down and in him heaven becomes tangible on earth.”(Prayer, 278). The world is made sacred by Christ’s presence in it. The common things of the world, bread and wine are made holy, even divine. This insight calls us to a level of conversion in our understanding of how we interact with the people here in the seminary or later in our parishes. Do we see ourselves as professional service providers or are we people who have thrown in their lot with the people we are serving? If we are to follow the line of thinking that we receive in Hebrews, then we, like Christ must throw in our lot, pitch our tent with those whom we are serving. The priest does not go to Church and then leave his priesthood behind in the Church. The priest takes the Church with him wherever he goes, in his very person.
The second image is the nuptial image of the bridegroom. The nuptial image of Christ is found frequently in the New Testament. In order to fully grasp the significance of the nuptial image of Christ, it is important that we understand the reality of marriage in the Old Testament, in Jewish religion. In Judaism there were three ways to contract a marriage. The first one was by way of a covenant or an agreement, a written document, a signed piece of paper. The bride, the groom and the families signed a piece of paper and once the paper was signed, the marriage had taken place; it was contracted. When the paper was signed the marriage was a reality. It did not require a ceremony. Second, money, you could buy a bride. In ancient Judaism the bride could be purchased for something like three goats. In later times it became a cash transaction, gold was necessary. If the groom gave the father of the bride some gold, the marriage had taken place; if he accepts the money it had taken place. This is the origin of the wedding ring. The wedding ring originates from the monetary price that was paid for brides in the ancient world. This not only within Judaism, but within other cultures as well. Third, sexual intercourse. In ancient Judaism, if sexual intercourse took place between two persons who were free to marry then they were married by virtue of the act. Of these three ways, any one could bring about a marriage. The most complete expression of marriage was found in the fulfillment of all three requirements. Christ presented in the nuptial imagery of the bridegroom calls to mind a sense of what all of these means of marriage are trying to convey. Christ the bridegroom is the fullness of the marital covenant, the fullness in the sense that the price has been paid. “You were ransomed from your futile conduct, handed on by your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold but with the precious blood of Christ as of a spotless unblemished lamb” (1 Peter 1:17-19). Christ has paid the price for his bride with his own blood. The covenant has been signed and ratified and the physical congress, communion, has been effected by Christ offering his own body to the bride, the Church. He offers it in the Eucharist, so we receive the Body of Christ in that very palpable way, in a very physical way in the Eucharist. Pope Benedict in his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, has highlighted this physical nature of our relationship with Christ in the Eucharist quite powerfully. “The imagery of marriage between God and Israel is now realized in a way previously inconceivable: it had meant standing in God's presence, but now it becomes union with God through sharing in Jesus' self-gift, sharing in his body and blood. The sacramental “mysticism”, grounded in God's condescension towards us, operates at a radically different level and lifts us to far greater heights than anything that any human mystical elevation could ever accomplish.” (Deus Caritas Est, 13). So the bridegroom imagery is complete and profound. The nuptial image of Christ raises a question as to how we understand our own priestly identity in light of Christ. What is the price that we pay by virtue of our being bridegrooms for the ransom of the bride. What sacrifice are we willing to make? The answer to this question becomes the key to what I want to discuss a bit later. It calls us to not only sign the papers to be a priest, but also to offer our own bodies as a living sacrifice to the bride, the Church. This imagery can be very fruitful. There is a startling passage in the writings of Archbishop Fulton Sheen. In The Priest is not His Own, Fulton Sheen considers the image of the priest standing at the altar offering mass and repeating the words of institution. What is interesting is that the priest changes grammatical voices at the words of institution. He changes voices from speaking in the second person to speaking in the first person. He speaks as Jesus Christ. “This is my body. This is my blood.” He speaks as Jesus Christ. That speaking cannot merely be understood as some kind of an act of spiritual ventriloquism but really has to be understood as the priest speaking on behalf of Christ and speaking on behalf of himself. This becomes a powerful image of the priesthood. When I offer the body and blood, do I do that merely as a stand in for Christ. It is a very good thing for Jesus to offer his body and his blood for the good of these people, but can I speak also in my own voice and say to the people, “This is my body given for you. This is my blood which is given up for you.” It becomes a radically different understanding of what the priest is doing and who the priest is when he speaks in the person of Christ.
Finally, the Book of Hebrews presents the image of Christ as the sacrifice. We see this in Hebrews 9:12. “He entered once for all into the sanctuary, not with the blood of goats and calves but with his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption.” (Hebrews 9:12). Christ is the sacrifice. St. John Chrysostom comments on this passage saying: “He brought words from God to us, conveying what came from the Father and adding his own death. We had offended; we ought to have died. He died for us and made us worthy of the covenant.” (Commentary on Hebrews, 16,2). He is not only the priest, and not only the temple, but also the sacrifice. He offers the sacrifice with his own blood. This follows very directly upon this image of the nuptial nature of the relationship between Christ and the Church and by extension between the priest and the Church. Christ is the sacrifice. The blood of Christ, however, is not something poured upon the ground or immolated in clouds of smoke, it is effective. The blood of Christ is generative and thus the sacrifice of those configured in Christ, the sacrifice of the priest is generative, it is life-giving. Celibacy in this context must be seen not primarily as a negation and not as a practical means to an end, but the very generativity, the fatherhood of the priest. Celibacy that is frigid and reserved is not celibacy, it is a futile sacrifice that offers nothing for the life of the world. Cold hearted celibacy is like the slaughter of so many useless animals. It may look dramatic but the people walk away from it stunned by the arctic blast of its complete and utter aridity.
In tying together these three images spread out over the Book of Hebrews, the important thing to note is that if Christ is the priest and Christ is the temple and Christ is the altar and Christ is the bridegroom and Christ is the sacrifice, what does that mean? It means that Christ is everything. That everything finds its meaning, its center in Christ. All of the symbolism and all of the actions of the Old Testament priesthood have now been completely rethought, reinvigorated, enlivened in the reality of Christ. What does that say about our own priesthood.? How do we understand ourselves as the priest, the temple, that is to say the context, but also the sacrifice that we offer, that we offer not only as a stand-in but also offer as ourselves? It means that our lives of faith, the work of formation is a continual building up, tearing down, honing away, augmenting, dissecting, perfecting so that Christ becomes all in all. Christ must become all in all.
What the author of Hebrews is really calling us as priests to understand are three things. First, the realization of who we are and what we do. Sometimes we can lose sight of the reality that as we who stand in persona Christi are the custodians of that Reality which is Christ’s way of presenting this eternal redemption. In our lives as priests we handle eternity. We are entrusted with the salvation of souls. We are not merely ersatz social workers, or institutional agents, or maintence men who have little or no contribution to make to the eschataological and soteriological ends of the human condition. We hold in our hands the human condition. We are responsible. And this realization calls for courage. Why are we in formation? What do we seek in this house of formation? Why are we ordained? What are we here to do? What is our purpose in life? A hazard of living here and a hazard of priestly existence is that it has the potential to become very bogged down, a kind of mundane kind of reality and to see the mundane as the end of our priesthood. At times priests can become very cynical and think that the priesthood is only about these kinds of mundane tasks. The sense of the heroic is lost. Courage flees. The eschaton conflates, Chronos trumps kiaros.
The call of Hebrews is a call to realize who we are as Christians and as priests. We must realize what our place in the world is. Sometimes in the face of some of the scandals that we have experienced in the Church in recent years we can begin to have a poor self image of our priestly existence. And yet, the work that we do by virtue of who we are, what we do at the altar, our labor and our very persons is what keeps the world from flying apart, what keeps souls from the eternity of hell, what perpetuates the Divine Reality in our midst. If we have that vision, we have a very different perspective on personal self worth and self understanding. We have different vision of what is significant and what is not. We also have a better sense of authentic clericalism, the clericalism of awesome responsibility rather than the clericalism of privilege and entitlement.
The second point for the author of Hebrews is the tangibility of the presence of the divine reality among us. This summer I gave a workshop to a group of priests on secularization. They wanted a workshop on the way in which secularization plays into the pastoral situation in priestly identity and ministry today. One of the challenges we face today as priests in preaching, in evangelization, in conveying the truth of the gospel is that we have lost the sense of the omnipresence of the divine reality. In our so-called secular lives, the so-called world, we have become very compartmentalized: Here is the Church’s realm over here and here is where God resides and God has a great deal of influence in this particular sphere, but we also have this other sphere in which we operate which is the large sphere of the secular world or sometimes people say “The real world.” We are very comfortable segmenting our lives. We do not take the temple with us. It is not only true of our present or future parishioners, it is also true of us. I am very comfortable dealing with God here, but, for goodness sake, I don’t want to have to deal with God over there. And yet we yearn for the supernatural. We long for a vision of reality that transcends the overweening hubris of sensuality and concreteness. A life lived only in the concrete reality of flesh is a pornographic life, a life of objectification and as our late Holy Father, Pope John Paul II observed people strive not to be objectified but loved. Loving the people we serve means calling them to a greater vision, a more profound reality. We must offer them depth perception. We must offer them the opportunity for an oblation rationabilis, an entering into the very life of God.
Third, for the author of Hebrews, there is the presence of the community. The biggest challenge that most of us face in the priesthood is that we have to be community builders. Otherwise the Church becomes what so many of the mega churches are; religious supermarkets. As Catholics, we build community. Parochialism is one of the greatest challenges we face in the Church today. How does parochialism go? “You’re not fast enough, I have to over to the other parish.” or “I don’t like the music over here.” or “I don’t like the way Father combs his hair.” or “I don’t like X, Y, and Z.” Sometimes there is very little loyalty to the parish community. The question becomes how well am I being served; how well are my personal needs being met by this parish and if they are not well met then I will just go somewhere else. It has nothing to do with the objective values of what is going on in the parish. For Catholics community building is extremely important. You know what I say to all of you when they come to the seminary. “You’re here. Be here. Try and build community here because that is a skill you are really going to need as a priest. You are going to need to learn to build the Body of Christ. To build community under adverse conditions with people you didn’t choose to be with and many of whom are almost impossible to live with.” In other words I have to build community with this group of very strange, odd, troubling people. But that is what I have to do. It is not as though I can say, “Oh, I won’t build community” or “I’ll just offer services for these people, and they can accept them or reject them going on their merry way as consumerist individuals.” Building community also entails building up the community, calling them to consider the higher way of thinking, the more exalted road of spiritual insight. This moves us beyond what Pope Benedict calls community as “self affirmation” and moves us toward “being found by the Lord who opens us out and leads us beyond frontiers.” (Feast of Faith, 149).
What, then, does the image of Melchizedek hold out for us in a priesthood modeled on Christ? I want to mention about several items here and then I want to go back to the question of courage.
First, a priesthood modeled on Christ in the order of Melchizedek, like Melchizedek, looses sight of origins and conclusions. In other words, the priest must not be too concerned about where everything has been, nor about where everything is going; but, must build community and must make Christ present in this situation now, in the present, in this moment, in this particular opportunity. Thus, the priest is caught up in what I might call the momentous now. He is caught up in this monumental understanding of the situation in which he finds himself. In other words, he is thoroughly engaging people. Have you ever noticed the priest who shakes everybody’s hand while looking over their shoulder? They come up to see him and he is waiting to see what’s next, and what’s coming down the line, and who is going who is going to be accosting him in a minute, and whether the weird one is going out the side door or not. He is constantly looking ahead to see what’s going to happen. Sometimes that is a very symbolic impression of the priesthood. I don’t have the ability to talk to this person in front of me and to focus on this person, so I am constantly engaging with the other who is coming down the line. Once they have arrived they are also going to be pushed aside for the future.
Second, the priesthood proclaims the efficacy of the sacrifice. The priesthood has to show why the sacrifice is important, why it is meaningful. Sometimes we can send mixed messages about the centrality of the Eucharist in our lives. Sometimes that is because we do not perceive the Eucharist as central to our lives. The only authentic priestly spirituality is the spirituality built upon the Eucharist. That is the only authentic priestly spirituality. If the Eucharist is not there as the center, the heart of our existence, if our lives are not dependent upon the Eucharist, then we can hardly expect to be able to communicate what others should be experiencing, If we do not see the Eucharist as the source and summit of our reality, then why should they see the importance of it. Why should they go to mass every Sunday? Therefore the priest must replicate in his body the sacrifice of Christ. We are not merely symbolic interpreters. We are living icons of the significance of the Eucharist.
Third, the priest does not spurn victimhood, which is not to say that the priest is a victim or should be a victim or should seek suffering. There is no value in suffering for the sake of suffering.. We have enough of that in the Church. But, suffering is real and some priests think that their entire life is predicated upon fleeing from the possibility of any kind of suffering. And, so, we coat ourselves with a kind of a Teflon skin so that no suffering can touch us. Sometimes that has different looks to it. Sometimes it is the way we live, our way of life. If our life style prohibits us from ever engaging any kind of suffering or sacrifice, then it is not a healthy life style. We are tied to the suffering of the people that we serve. The priest has lots of options to make his life very comfortable and sometimes those are great, we should take some of those options, but sometimes they can be ways of avoiding the realities of the world. The priesthood has to be generous with authentic hospitality. We are again, pitching our tent, throwing our lot in with those whom we serve. This is true evangelization. How excited are we about our evangelization? How excited are we to spread the good news of Jesus Christ? If we are very excited about it, if we are committed to it, we can overcome all kinds of hardships and discomfort, but if the relationship with Jesus Christ is dead, we are going to spend a lot of time with the remote control or the mouse in our hand. If that relationship is alive and vibrant, we can say “yes” to a lot of things that we might not be able to have the energy for in another context.
Finally, the priest builds the Body of Christ by perfecting the Body of Christ and by being the Body of Christ. We are a Mode of Presence and sometimes we do not like to accept that responsibility. Prepare now for that responsibility. It is a fulltime reality. We don’t like to accept the responsibility for being a Mode of Presence because that requires significant courage on our part. And now we are back full circle.
Courage? Courage in the priesthood, what does it mean? Looking at all of this, what are the ways in which we can understand courage? What do we need to be courageous about? What are the ways courage can be expressed in our lives as seminarians and as priests? In the ancient world, courage had three aspects: Physical, mental, and spiritual. Let me now consider each of these in turn.
Physical courage, in our context might be understood as offering our bodies on the altar of heroism, or it might be understood in quite a different context. For example, the courage to be a immolated on the altar of the mundane. What does that mean? It means to live within the context of the daily life. There are some seminarians I call thrill seekers. They are only happy if there is some kind of drama being stirred up. So if there isn’t any drama going on, they will stir up some drama. They can’t be in a seminary that doesn’t have a huge controversy or that doesn’t have a gross injustice or that doesn’t have a great tragedy unfolding. There can’t be a priestly ministry that is not tied to great campaigns or daily incidents of demonic possession. St. Augustine mentions just such tactics in the actions of the bridesmaids in the Gospel of St. Matthew: “They sought for what they were most prone to seek for, to shine with others’ oil, to walk after others’ praises.” (Sermon, 93,8). In these seminarians and priests there is a lack of ability to live in the mundane or that which is not personally momentous. In the priesthood it can look like this: I’m not satisfied with just doing my Communion rounds, going to the nursing home, listening to Bertha complain. doing my marriage prep—I want something thrilling and exciting so you have to conjure up some real disaster or something to keep your life interesting. The reality of seminary life, the reality of the priesthood is repetition, and ritual, and the reinforcement of the “over and over”. Find God here in the ticking of the clock and the beating of every heart. Find God here in the joy of doing small things with great love as Mother Teresa once said. Find holiness in the fulfillment of one’s obligations and you will be courageous enough to face the dramatic when it inevitably comes. Those who cannot become victims of the mundane are like those bridesmaids, not content to sit around and wait and had no oil when the Bridegroom appeared. Our preparation for the advent of Christ’s glory is in the advent of his appearance as an insignificant child in an obscure town to nobody parents. The Glory of God, the humiliation of the Son of God was that He was a victim of the mundane in the harsh reality of the Incarnation. Incarnational priesthood implies a knot tying us to the usual
We might understand mental courage as the courage to recognize the sacramental reality. What is sacramental reality? This should be the motto of all priests. If we could all have mottos, we all should have the same motto. This is the ideal that should govern our lives as priests. Things are not as they appear to be. Is this not the basis of the sacramental reality? When we hold up the cup, hold up the paten and we say “This is the Lamb of God” we are asking people to accept the reality that things are not what they appear to be. That is the sacramental reality. We are comfortable with that in the Blessed Sacrament, but are we comfortable in transferring that sacramental reality to every aspect of our priestly life? We encounter everyday the tiresome seminarian, the bum, the complainer, the addict, the fornicator. We are happy compartmentalizing and judging by appearances. Courage calls us to invest enough in the life of the people that we are serving to see in all of them the reality that things are not what they seem to be. What about our brother seminarians who sometimes drive us crazy. Why do they sometimes drive us crazy? Because we reduce them to stereotypes, this is the one who won’t work and this is the one who does goofy things. But, if we keep that motto before our eyes, things are not what they seem to be, we are constantly having to look for the deeper, broader, more profound reality behind the appearances which is the instinct of the Catholic imagination and must be the daily practice of the seminarian and the priest. This applies to the faculty and staff as well. Of course it does.
Another example of mental courage is the courage to remain anonymous. We need to be able to do what we do and not expect that we are always going to be congratulated for it. To do what we do and realize that we don’t do it for thanks, though it is good to get thanks, we don’t do it for recognition, we don’t do it so we can become a bishop, we don’t do so we can become a monsignor. We don’t do it to get praise from our peers. We don’t do it so everyone will think we are holier than we are. We do it for Christ. And just as Melchizedek led a hidden life, so much of the ministry of the priest must be done in secret. The courage to remain anonymous becomes our last stronghold against ego.
Finally the virtue of courage is spiritual insofar as it tends us toward the raucousness of sanctity. We become saints when we have the courage to see that in the circumference of a glass vial rest the cosmological menace that is the Incarnate Word, that Word who powers the stars and planets and leaps great chasms of the mind to ravish us with His all consuming possibility
In the priesthood there is the courage to be fully transliterated in the idiom of the Body of Christ, to express in our flesh the bite of the God who is Holy, Mighty and Immortal, the tangibility of pure essence
The courage to be in his likeness, present ourselves in his likeness, overwrought in his likeness overtaken, like Melchizedek on the journey of mendacity to shimmer into the depth and height and breadth and width of excellence purely realized in the blood stained face of the Savior
The courage to live the Gospel like addicts shooting into the veins, the very marrow of our beings the distilled liqueur of human and divine compassion
The courage to unite ourselves with those thousand, thousands treading into the beatific vision and see in that throng our beloved dead, and saints known and unknown leaping the forecourts of that city hewn of adamant alight with jasper,
And joining our voices in that endless hymn Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God of Hosts, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac the God of Jacob, the God of Jesus Christ, a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.
Let us pray -
I wonder how many people really believe that they have as much as they deserve?
It seems like a persistent current in the human condition that we are always grasping for more.
Since Eve baked the pie, the desire for greater, better, higher has preoccupied us.
It is the human condition to be like James and John and look for those opportunities in life to shine, to achieve, to advance.
Call it what you will, one-upmanship, ambition, power grabbing. We all suffer from it a bit, even in a spiritually exalted place like Saint Meinrad.
It is just human nature to want to get everything coming to you.
And Jesus seems to agree.
Everyone will get what is coming to him.
But not yet. Not yet.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus is teaching his disciples an important lesson.
God’s task is to dole out the advancements in due time
Our task is to live in the momentous now.
Can you be baptized? Jesus asks
Can you drink the cup? He inquires
In doing so Jesus is inviting his disciples and us into the moment.
The future with its great rewards will take care of itself
Jesus commands:
Be inundated here and now with the joys and the pains of living
Give yourself completely to the floods of need and opportunity afforded us in this place
Give yourself to your sisters and brothers.
Be sensitive to their needs
Be compassionate in what you do
Learn to be with and the rewards will follow
The now offers us endless opportunities to be disciples.
The baptism we receive is the baptism of presence, of drowning in involvement
The baptism we receive is the baptism of fire that comes for confronting life’s challenges head on.
The baptism we receive is a baptism of repentance for mistakes made and then forgiven in God’s infinite mercy.
The cup we drink is the cup of suffering for those who want the basic dignity of life
The cup we drink is the cup of joy we experience in the laughter of children and the pure revelry of being a part
The cup we drink is the cup of sympathy and sensitivity with those who are calling out in desperation, in the nursing home, the hospital, the abortion facility, even within the walls of this seminary
The cup we drink is the cup of Christ, who poured out his life for the service and good of all.
Jesus says: Live life, drink fully of life, be baptized by life and see what God will do for you.
I recently had the opportunity to attend a meeting of seminary rectors from around the country and the speaker was one of our alumni bishops, Bishop Peter Sartain of the Diocese of Joliet. Bishop Sartain spoke very eloquently about the qualities that folks in the Church wanted from their priests. These are some of the things he mentioned
Warmth
Generosity
Compassion
Care
Presence
Self-giving
Service
Kindness
Patience
Go the extra mile
A desire to look after the youth and the elderly
To be a good Listener
Peacefulness
Honest
Humility
Prudence
These qualities are not things that can be taught in a classroom. They are not qualities that we can train someone to demonstrate. They are the products of living a full and authentic human life. This is what Jesus encourages in all of this followers, to be fully alive, fully involved, fully engaged with the exigencies of life, the joys and sorrows, the hope and wonder of being Christ-like inundating between the divine and the human in that vital tension that is the life of God in us., leaving the future for the Father to decide.
And of course, he strengthens us in this blessed vocation. He calls us daily to truly share his body and blood in the invigorating sacrifice of this altar. The food we receive here is a challenge for us, the challenge to be truly who we are. -
Would that all of the people of the Lord were prophets
If there is a universal truth about discipleship, it is probably this:
You never know
A few months ago, I was in a parish for a Saint Meinrad Sunday. Afterward one of the parishioners walked up to me and asked me, in very familiar tones, how things were going and that I bet I didn’t expect to see him there. Well that much was true. We chatted a bit more, and then he said that he would never forget Coca Cola. “Coca Cola changed my life.”
Then he said, I know you hear that all the time. And I was thinking that I certainly did not but merely shook my head because it was obvious that this man thought that he and I were very well-known to each other and I had no idea whatsoever who he was.
November 11. He continued. I will never forget that day. Your Coca Cola sermon changed my life forever. Thank you
And then he walked away.
I have no idea who that man was.
I vaguely remember preaching a homily about Coca Cola about 15 years ago.
My knowledge of or intentions about the event were really unimportant. His life was somehow transformed by something I said and, except for this chance encounter, he would have never had the opportunit to tell me and I would have never known it.
Would that all of the people of the Lord were prophets
You never know
In the Gospel today, Jesus tells the disciples that the work of God is not something that can be easily contained in neat structures and well-constructed boxes, in tents or houses of stone.
It cannot be contained in our understanding about what is right and proper
I cannot be contained by our very laudable intentions.
It simply cannot be contained
The Word of God is about, living and active.
It is expressed in so many ways that the ways can never be counted.
It is manifested in multivalent forms, in voices familiar and foreign, in gestures, words, rituals, the living creation.
The disciples have encountered some folks casting out demons and healing in the name of Jesus who were not on the approved list of exorcists and healers
Jesus gently reminds these erstwhile bureaucrats; these list makers, these canonists and not for the first time that:
If there is a universal truth about discipleship, it is probably this:
You never know
Would that all of the people of the Lord were prophets
But of course, we like to know
We like to control our doses of God’s action in our lives. Not too much please, I have spiritual indigestion
We like to have charge. To move the spirit this way and that so that our spiritual strategic plans can be full realized. We make lists, we categorize, we plot the points of our participation in pointless positioning of spiritual cartography
We like to see the benefit of what we do, be thanked, close the loop on our good intentions
We like to predict the outcome so that we can move on to the next thing.
But then something happens and we are reminded yet again that:
If there is a universal truth about discipleship, it is probably this:
You never know
Would that all of the people of the Lord were prophets
You never know where God’s word will be spoken
You never know the surprising syllables of the sound of the voice that speaks peace, wonder, beauty, comfort
You never know what opportunities might arise if we take the risk to be in the wrong place at the wrong time
You never know how we might be effected by the chance encounter, the off-handed moment, the very randomness of Christian living
And likewise
Engaging with others in this community we never know the impact of our words, our gestures, our most off-handed expression
We never know what impression we might leave that we never intended
We never know what our smile or nod of the head might mean in the life of someone whose day is not going well.
We never know what effect our simple words might mean in the life of someone who is struggling with mighty demons all undercover
We never know what our presence might mean in the life of a brother or sister who is lonely and doesn’t know how to reach out.
We never know
Would that all of the people of the Lord were prophets
The message here is clear. Whatever efforts we may exert, whatever energies we pour out
The spirit of God cannot be confined to the official moments of grace, it permeates the life of the world, infuses itself into the fiber, the weave of this community and we are its agents. We are its angels and often, angels unaware.
The spirit of God cannot be contained in the tent of our limited imaginations. God has sown himself into the lining of the human condition and we experience the power of his Word among us as a dynamic dynamite, a roar, a hurricane, a tide, a still whisper, a word of hope, courage, fidelity, love.
It cannot be controlled by what we intend to happen to others and what we imagine will happen to us.
The ultimate work is God’s
God gives the growth.
But we are God’s angels, angels out of control
Ambassadors of the good news in simple, unpretentious ways.
A simple wave of the hand at the right moment can cast out more demons than the most heroic and dramatic acts of exorcism
If there is a universal truth about discipleship, it is probably this:
You never know
And just as we never know what impact we might have on others, what impact we CAN have on others, we must also
Be open to receive the unexpected act of grace in a brother or sister for whom we may not care
Be open to hear the word of God spoken in syllables strange to our ears in the mouths of immigrants, outlanders, outcasts
Be open to cutting off all that hinders us from experiencing the pure love of God poured into our laps.
Be open to Good News communicated in those we like to categorize, against whom we have preconceived notions, the lost, the rejected , the troubled and troublesome
Be open to those whose names are not on the list of approved prophets and those who stand outside the tent
Be open to the chance encounter, the unexpected conversation that speaks unspeakable grace in unforeseen ways
Be open to what God wants to do in each of our lives everyday, today
Be open to hearing through the cacophony of those internal demons that say, don’t open up, don’t engage, don’t listen to him
Now all of this is a very tall order
But openness to sharing without expecting the benefit
And openness to hearing the Word of God in unanticipated others
Can only led us to be better disciples, and possibly to salvation,
Today it leads us to this sacrificial altar where the body of the living Jesus rises like the morning sun casting out the darkness of our expectations and reinforcing in the circumference of a piece of bread and in the glistening of some drops of wine the universal truth about discipleship:
You never know
