So they fall down
before the one who sits on the throne
and worship him, who lives forever and ever.
They throw down our crowns of incredulity before the throne, exclaiming:
“Worthy are you, Lord our God,
to receive glory and honor and power,
for you created all things;
because of your will they came to be and were created.”
Who I ask you can endure the apocalypse at seven fifteen?
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the door of heaven opened here, or here this morning and we could get a glimpse of the beyond?
Wouldn’t it be incredible if we heard the triumphal tones of that trumpet-like voice crying out “Come up here!”?
Wouldn’t it be awesome if we got caught up in the swirling spirations of the Immortal, Invisible?
Wouldn’t it be amazing if we saw the throne of jasper and carnelian (whatever that is)?
Wouldn’t it be tremendous to be dazzled by that halo of emerald shining in our chapel?
Wouldn’t it be overwhelming to see twenty-four circling elders before breakfast?
Flashes of lightening, Peals of thunder, Seven flaming torches, Four living creatures
What a vision. Perhaps too much of a vision for seven fifteen?
But it would be well … wonderful
Instead we get something else, Not a different reality
But a kind of accidental vision with which to see that reality
Accidental vision in which …
The door of heaven looks like an opening in a sandstone wall
The voices croak a bit with the strains of old chanted psalms
We are caught up in the insalubratory Spirit of lost sleep
The throne looks a bit like a table of wood and granite
The halo is a bright light shining off the roof of a copper box
The twenty-four elders, old monks and priests, a smattering of sisters and a pack of cranky, red-eyed seminarians slouching toward Thanksgiving
Slouching toward Thanksgiving with accidental vision
Miraculous myopicity
But O yes O yes Our song is the same: Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty
Our song is the same even at seven fifteen, Even with accidental vision
As we penetrate the veil of mystery and with triumph rejoice with the heavenly witnesses
So we fall down
before the one who sits on the throne
and worship him, who lives forever and ever.
We throw down our crowns of incredulity before the throne, exclaiming:
“Worthy are you, Lord our God,
to receive glory and honor and power,
for you created all things;
because of your will they came to be and were created.”
Apocalypse indeed, even at Seven fifteen

Given in Baltimore, USCCB Annual Meeting

My rector’s conferences this year focus on the spirituality of the priest as witnessed by the Rite of Ordination. The authentic spirituality of any office in the Church must be contained in the means by which that office is made. Thus, in the past months we have focused on the ideal of presence in the spiritual life of the priest and the particularities of that life as experienced in the promises made by the priest at ordination, especially the promise of obedience. In the coming months, we will focus on the laying on of hands, the prayer of consecration, the anointing, vesting, transfer of gifts, etc. The final reflection I will offer the seminarians in the Spring will be on the sign of peace. I would like to give you a bit of a preview of that conference this evening.
The sign of peace is a transitional gesture. The bishop embraces the newly ordained in an ancient gesture of fraternity and relationship. The gesture says: You are now one of us. You are a part of this group, this family, this diocese, this presbyterate. Following the sign of peace by the bishop, all of the priests present likewise offer the sign. It speaks the same anthropological language. While the sign of peace is a rich and meaningful gesture in itself, I am more interested in what comes after, which, in the Rite of Ordination is nothing. The new priest now takes his place among that group that has fully accepted him. He is now one of them. He is now called to carry out the responsibilities of membership in that group, family, diocese, and presbyterate. The long period of testing and formation is over and now … the future waits. The assembly of the faithful, and indeed the priests are anxious. Perhaps the bishop is also anxious about what the coming days, weeks and months will unfold. Expectations are high on every side. What does the bishop have the right to expect his new priest to be? What do the priests have a right to expect? What do God’s people have a right to expect?
First they have a right to expect that this man is a man of prayer. He has a relationship with God that is deep and intimate in itself, but is also lived in the context of the life of the Church. His mysticism is not drawn from esoteric sources of revelation about what is true and good, but from the very fiber of the Church militant, a Church alive, a Church whose spiritual animus may not always be pristine, but is unflaggingly real. This prayer expresses itself in a total commitment to deepening the priest’s relationship with Christ through the Liturgy of the Hours, through a penetrating love of the Eucharist, through a healthy devotion to Our Lady and the saints. It is a prayer steeped in the heart of the real Church, a Church of real persons, not an idealistic Church of his own construction that can never be realized this side of the Heavenly Jerusalem. His ease of prayer demonstrates a true comfortability in traversing a divine engagement.
There is also the right to expect that this man is a whole person. His human personality is truly as the late Pope John Paul II noted: “a bridge to his pastoral engagement.” He is comfortable with his emotions, his sexuality, his motivations. He knows how to have a good conversation. He has a sense of humor. While he takes the priesthood seriously, he does not take himself too seriously. He is not a narcissist. He embraces celibacy as an invitation to the many rather than an attention to the one. He is a good preacher. He studies the Word of God as an old friend. He is a good teacher. He knows the Church’s tradition and the fullness of that Tradition. He does not traffic in specialties or trivial Catholicism but appreciates the history of the Church as broad and deep. He is truly present to those whom he serves and he knows fully what service is. He has a genius for the mundane, for visiting the sick, for tending tirelessly to the elderly. He does not see his priesthood only in terms of stings of heroic deeds, rather he finds the heroic in the daily life of the priest. He works well with others, with other priests, deacons, lay ministers and the faithful. He is easygoing, but he never shirks responsibility. He knows how to collaborate, but he also understands the authentic role he is called to fulfill as a priest. He celebrates the Liturgy beautifully, elegantly and simply. He is not attracted by externals but knows the Liturgy in its radical nature. He is a man of vision and he can lead others in to that vision, not by coercion but through love. He is patient with people, never prone to outbursts. He is appropriately transparent. He inspires others. He will not walk away after a few months or years. He has shelf life because he has learned honesty. He knows what obedience is. He also knows on the day of his ordination that he is not, never will be a finished product. He is open to conversion, to change, to becoming always better. He is a man for others, a man of God, a man of whom St. Paul spoke: It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.
And what is Christ but, hopeful, visionary, future-oriented, authentic.
This is what you have the right to expect your new priest to be. This is what Saint Meinrad pledges to deliver to your cathedral on the day of ordination. Our success depends on a number of factors.
A 150 year tradition of forming men for the diocesan priesthood
A staff that is experienced and likewise has shelf life, that won’t be turning over every few years.
A faculty that is intellectually second to none AND knows how to form men for their pastoral purpose
An intense focus on human formation and spiritual formation as the necessary foundations upon which intellectual and pastoral elements can be built
A conviction that priests are not cutouts, but complete men who need care and individual consideration in formation
A strong working relationship with Vocation Directors and Bishops
An intense and honest dialogue with you in which I pledge that you will never hear anything from Saint Meinrad but the Truth.
Bishops, in the Church today we are past playing a numbers game. We know that quality men in priestly service are a necessity. We cannot, we do not have the luxury to settle for second best. The stakes are too high.
You deserve the best priests. Your presbyterates deserve the best brothers. The faithful, the all too patient and forgiving faithful, deserve the best we have to offer.
At Saint Meinrad, we will never shirk from that responsibility. You can believe that.
We appreciate you so much. We love working with you. We love knowing that our alumni are serving you well. Please God may it continue to be so.
Thank you and good evening.

Lo, the day is coming, blazing like an oven,
when all the proud and all evildoers will be stubble,
and the day that is coming will set them on fire,
leaving them neither root nor branch,
says the LORD of hosts.

The air is full of the eschaton these days. Swirling leaves and quickening hours
The readings are full of the eschaton these days
The four last things
Death and Judgment, Heaven and Hell

Needless to say as a child I worried a lot about Hell
I wasn’t a particularly virtuous child
I was always getting into trouble
Christmas every year was a complete terror as I was usually naughty and never nice

My grandmother was constantly telling me that if I didn’t change my ways I would end up where the fire is never quenched and the worm dieth not
How I kept from becoming I serial killer I do not know

Perhaps we all fear hell, death, judgment
But a confessor in my younger years once told me that if you fear hell, you will not go there.
While I am not so sure of the soundness of the doctrine, frankly, I’m going with it.

These days …
I think about Heaven a lot.
I suppose we all do especially as we get a bit umm older
I wonder who goes to heaven and who doesn’t?

We all speculate

Not about the obvious people of course
St. Joseph
St. Francis
Mother Teresa
The Pope

Instead, I wonder about people like my Aunt Pearl

Aunt Pearl was my grandfather’s sister
When I was 8 years old, she was about 240 years old

Aunt Pearl was the bane of the cousins’ existence

First of all she always smelled like mothballs and that icky powder that old ladies wore
She applied this powder to her face very liberally and painted on her rosy cheeks and lips
She always wore the same coat, a molting mink that had been alive at some eon before the process of evolution got underway

She smelt and she shedded

And she was stingy
Every year for Christmas or our birthdays, she would send us the same present, a dime taped to an index card

And whenever she came over to the house, usually on Thanksgiving and Christmas she would gather us round and say.
Aunt Pearl has a treat for you
And she would produce from her ubiquitous patent leather pocketbook a stick of juicy fruit gum which she would then divide among her miniature mendicants

An eighth of a stick of gum and eleven dimes is the pearline legacy so …

Yes I wonder if Aunt Pearl got to heaven

Because when push comes to shove is that not what we are really longing for?
To escape Hell and find our way to heaven, perhaps with a pit stop in purgatory?

We live our lives in the anticipation that amid the swirling leaves, the biting winds, the darkening days, the decay of the year, there is HOPE.

Hope that the pain and anxiety which we hold so closely to our hearts will evaporate in the twinkling of an eye
Hope that all our woundedness, our past, our sins will vanish in the wind like the acrid smoke of waning days and burning leaves
Hope that we can rise above the tenacious aimlessness of this world, rise to power, self power, God-like power, the power of saints

Hope that there is a place where all doubts are removed
Where all hurts are healed
Where all victims are made complete
All sinners forgiven
All enveloped in the all in all

In these waning days of the year, in this season of the eschaton

We are reminded that we continue to take part in a cosmic drama
That surrounded by the mundane and the fading, we are nevertheless pressing on to Glory

Glory that crests the eastern sky with the bright transcendence of another dawn
Glory that caresses with calloused hands those jasper walls, those golden gates of promise
Glory that creates in us new visions, fresh dreams, fiery energy to press forward to serve the needs of all: By your perseverance you will secure your lives

And in that Glory, we shall be reunited with all those who have gone before
In that Glory, failure and portends of hell will be transmogrified into the blessed assurance of immortality

In that Glory we will see him face to face as we enter into the fulfillment of the Incarnation
It is the very glory that comes to us now at this altar
The glory of the Host transcending all trepidation, rising toward New Jerusalem now alive in us
In that Glory we shall be, we are surrounded by Francises and Teresas and Josephs and Johns and Pauls and all the saints arrayed in their wedding garments
They call out to us even now of that coming day

And on that day, on that day I hope to see old aunt pearl again, in a brand new coat

And on that day I hope that at last I can get a whole stick of gum


Lo, the day is coming, blazing like an oven,
when all the proud and all evildoers will be stubble,
and the day that is coming will set them on fire,
leaving them neither root nor branch,
says the LORD of hosts.
But for you who fear my name, there will arise
the sun of justice with its healing rays.

Do you promise respect and obedience to me and my successors?
When we consider the various dimensions of priestly life and ministry, as we contemplate the realization of that life and ministry in our years of formation, we may give little thought to the promise of obedience. The promise of obedience is not discussed as much in the seminary formation curriculum as, say, the promise of celibacy or some of the other aspects of the priesthood. Yet, the promise of obedience is often the one promise that makes the greatest difference in the life of the priest. Today, in keeping with the format of my rector’s conferences this year, I would like to focus on the promise of obedience. The same promise is made by the deacon and the priest.
Do you promise respect and obedience to me and my successors?
To begin my reflection this morning, I would like to look at the question of obedience from a philosophical point of view. What is the essence of obedience? The Latin word, obedire, means two things, to hear and to listen. In English there is a slight difference in the meaning of these two words. Hearing is essentially a passive event, involving sound waves moving over the auditory mechanism of the person. As long as my ears are working properly, I can hear. But hearing requires no response. Again, it is passive. Listening is another thing entirely. I listen when I process what I have heard, when I place it in a context, when I, at least at some level, understand what I am hearing. Listening is an active concept, it requires attention and it is dialogical with that which is heard. Passive or active, however, obedire places us in a particular context, the context of relationship. These actions require relationships of varying depths. When I hear, I am in a kind of relationship with something outside of myself, be it ever so feeble, perhaps nothing more than mere sound. When I listen, I deepen that relationship. I am in a contextual relationship, an intentional relationship with the other who makes the sound. Philosophically, I would say the essence of obedience is relationship and by extension the recognition of a necessary relationship in the person. It is also the desire to recognize that relationship is essential to who I am as a person. There are a number of ways in which this relationship can be understood. Sometimes we understand relationships in artificial ways. The gathering of this community is, in some sense, artificial. Most of us have no natural relationship and our coming together is, in a sense, accidental. We are gathered here in some ways because of a contract, a contract for formation that we have made. Our relationships here are certainly very real, but they might be perceived as artificial. We did not really choose to be together. Many of the relationships in which we find ourselves are similar to our relationality here. Our neighborhoods, our schools, our parishes are all a rather haphazard ingathering of folks who may have much in common but are mostly drawn together by the accidents of proximity, bureaucracy or choices of various kinds. However, while the various relationships and communities in which we find ourselves may be accidental, there is a natural element of relationship that must also be taken into account.
Human beings have relationship written in the core of their being. Pope John Paul II in his Theology of the Body renewed this insight for our contemporary western cultural situation. In the modern and postmodern ideal, we are told that we do not need each other, that we can be lone rangers, that we should be completely independent and isolated from the mentality of the “herd”. For the late pope, this cultural message was conflicted because it denied the essential nature of the person as one necessarily in relationship with the other. Relationship is an anthropological truth and many of our modern woes have grown out of an attempt to deny the essential nature of this truth. Obedience, as an expression of essential relationality is the recognition, at a very basic level of what is true about myself. Obedience is telling the truth. Obedience is the expression of the truth that is written in the very fiber of my being. I cannot live authentically without an understanding of obedience. At the heart, this obedience is an intentional hearing the call of relationship that naturally resounds within me and responding to that call by actively pursuing the authentic nature of relationship. Obedience is also an expression of piety in the classical sense of being true to form, true to who I am as a person. It is an acknowledgement of my need for others, a need that is intense, a need that is absolute, a need that cannot be denied without damaging my nature. Obedience is also an expression of humility, of knowing the truth and living the truth of my reality. Obedience is an expression of my anthropological aptitude.
At the level of discipleship, obedience takes on a new dimension. In baptism, confirmation and Eucharist, I am a new creation. My personhood has been changed in a radical way. In Christian discipleship, my personhood takes on new dimensions, the dimensions of being “in Christ”. My character has changed and I am now called to new expressions of relationship. As a Christian, my obedience is now listening to what is true about being a follower of Christ. I have new responsibilities and new intentionalities. My piety and my humility have different emphases although the essence of relationship remains the same. In discipleship, my personhood has to conform to the life of Christ, particularly as it is expressed in the Church. I have a responsibility to fulfill the Law of Christ written in the very heart of the Church’s reality. I have a responsibility to God’s people by my supernatural affiliation with them. I am called to realize that “all are one in Christ Jesus”, that while different members we are of the same body, the Body of Christ. I must act continually for Christ in order to realize the rule of discipleship. It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me. Obedience to Christ is my authentic self and to act contrary to that truth is to be inauthentic to myself. The natural relationship is now a supernatural relationship and those formerly artificial expressions of community become natural expressions of who I am, brothers and sisters to all, particularly those who are most in need. Who are my mother and brothers and sisters? Those who hear the Word and put it into action.
Finally there is the obedience we express in Holy Orders. The obedience of Holy Orders is an augmentation and an intensification of the obedience owed to the Church through the sacraments of initiation. The Sacrament of Holy Orders is undertaken freely. It is an intentional acceptance of new relationships based upon the new office that I receive when I am ordained. The obedience of Holy Orders is obedience to the Church and to specific persons in the Church. It is a particular relationship expressed through our understanding of the nature of the Church and the means by which the Church communicates our relationship with God. As deacons and priests we make promises of obedience to bishops. Who is the bishop to demand this obedience? Obviously, the bishop does not ask this obedience solely on behalf of himself. We do not make a promise of obedience to the particular personality of the bishop. Rather, our promise of obedience is made to what, or rather to whom the bishop represents. He represents Christ. He speaks on behalf of Christ. His ministry is the ministry of Christ. “the apostolic office of bishops was instituted by Christ the Lord and pursues a spiritual and supernatural purpose.” We make a promise of obedience to this office and this means that we understand what that office represents in the life of the Church, within our larger promise of obedience in the context of our discipleship. Every bishop, by virtue of his office speaks on behalf of Christ. He is also a human person, with a particular personality, particular ideas and opinions. While we do not make a promise of obedience to these aspects of the bishop’s person, it is dangerous to begin to see too strong a dichotomy between the bishop as a man and his office. Our relationship in obedience is the relationship with a person in his office. It is a relationship with the essential nature of his personhood, that is, his being a bishop and having a particular responsibility and role in that nature within the Church. His essence is bishop, but his accidental qualities may be quite varied. He may like certain foods or sports. He may have a particular opinion about one thing or another. Our relationship of obedience is not to those accidental qualities of individual men, but rather to the essential office that makes up the core of each man.
What is the nature of this obedience? The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium gives us some insight here. The term used in the constitution regarding the necessary relationship between the bishop and men in Holy Orders is obsequium relgiosum, religious submission of will and intellect to the teachings of the Magisterium, represented concretely in the life of the deacon or the priest by his relationship with his bishop. Let us now take a moment to review this section of Lumen Gentium
Bishops, teaching in communion with the Roman Pontiff, are to be respected by all as witnesses to divine and Catholic truth. In matters of faith and morals, the bishops speak in the name of Christ and the faithful are to accept their teaching and adhere to it with a religious submission. This religious submission of mind and will must be shown in a special way to the authentic magisterium of the Roman Pontiff, even when he is not speaking ex cathedra; that is, it must be shown in such a way that his supreme magisterium is acknowledged with reverence, the judgments made by him are sincerely adhered to, according to his manifest mind and will. His mind and will in the matter may be known either from the character of the documents, from his frequent repetition of the same doctrine, or from his manner of speaking.
As we know, the magisterial teachings of the Church are gradated according to a hierarchy of truths. The 1973 document on the ecclesial role of the theologian from the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, Donum Veritatis offers the following reflection.
When the Magisterium of the Church makes an infallible pronouncement and solemnly declares that a teaching is found in Revelation, the assent called for is that of theological faith. This kind of adherence is to be given even to the teaching of the ordinary and universal Magisterium when it proposes for belief a teaching of faith as divinely revealed. When the Magisterium proposes "in a definitive way" truths concerning faith and morals, which, even if not divinely revealed, are nevertheless strictly and intimately connected with Revelation, these must be firmly accepted and held. When the Magisterium, not intending to act "definitively", teaches a doctrine to aid a better understanding of Revelation and make explicit its contents, or to recall how some teaching is in conformity with the truths of faith, or finally to guard against ideas that are incompatible with these truths, the response called for is that of the religious submission of will and intellect. This kind of response cannot be simply exterior or disciplinary but must be understood within the logic of faith and under the impulse of obedience to the faith.
The promise of obedience is firmly directed toward the existential consequences of this theological teaching. Concretely speaking what is this religious submission of will and intellect? It is first realized in the understanding that my ideas may not be the most important ones to express in a given situation. Other people, particularly by virtue of the office they hold may know more than I do. As a deacon or priest, where do I first turn for understanding particular questions? Relationally, our instinct must always be to the bishop. We are in a necessary relationship with this man precisely for this purpose. The bishop is not the arbiter of disputes, he is rather the first teacher. He holds the priestly office of teacher, the prophetic office of the Church. “The Bishop, through the grace of the Holy Spirit who expands and sharpens the eyes of his faith, relives the sentiments of Christ, the Good Shepherd, as he faces the anxieties and expectations of today’s world, by announcing a word of truth and life and by fostering activity which goes to the heart of humanity. Only in being united to Christ, in being faithful to his Gospel, in being realistically open to this world and in being loved by God, can the Bishop become the harbinger of hope.”
Religious submission means that I submit for religious reasons. Those religious reasons are centered on how I understand the voice of Christ to be speaking in the Church. Religious submission means that I must bracket my ideas and opinions (at least in the first instance) and listen to what Christ is saying, in our circumstances in the person of the bishop. Religious submission of the will means that I do not act in any way that would indicate my lack of full agreement with the expressed teaching of the bishop. I do so not out of a robotic response but out of the conviction that the voice of Christ is speaking even if I cannot yet appreciate what is being said. religious submission of the intellect means that I try to think with the Church. I strive to do so. This kind of submission means that I give the Church, the voice of Christ, the benefit of the doubt with the firm conviction that if I live a teaching, if I strive to believe a teaching, I will understand the logic of faith in that teaching. If I make judgments about what the bishop is saying to me before I strive to live that teaching, then I do so dishonestly. This is a process of assent that I agree to in my promise of obedience. While it is true, absolutely true that conscience is primary in our decision making, an appeal to conscience cannot be primary in our realization of any teaching. In other words, if dissent is possible, it is only possible (and not very probable) after the fact of religious submission.
When we look at the Rite of Ordination, the first thing we note is that this promise is the first one in the rite that is accompanied by a gesture or ritual action. The candidate kneels before the bishop. This is a meaningful sign of the relationship between these two men. One is sitting in a position of teaching, the other is kneeling in a position of learning. With this posture, we acknowledge the essences of the persons making the gesture. They do not stand as equals, we accept this. Their teacher/student relationship is inherent in their persons. Their relative postures are a statement of the truth about themselves. It is a relationship freely chosen, but once chosen is not negotiable. In making the gesture I am choosing to acknowledge that I now live in this irreversible relationship, that this relationship is true in my life. The posture is accompanied by a gesture of holding hands. Holding hands is a very powerful and very prevalent anthropological gesture. To grasp hands is to grasp the life force of the other. To place my hands in the hands of another is to place my entire life at their disposal. It is a gesture of trust, of interchange between the persons. It is the same essential gesture we witness in marriage. It sends the message that the lives of these persons, in their essential personhood is now inextricably bound together.
Do you promise respect and obedience to me and my successors?
Again, we make our promise to a particular bishop, a particular man. Care must be given that our promise is not made to his personality rather than to his office, his accidental qualities rather than his essence. Our attitude can never degenerate to: better the bishop you know than the bishop you do not know. We should admire our ordinary. We must respect our ordinary. It is wonderful if we can be friendly with our ordinary. It is essential that we know who this man is and for whom he speaks. The personality of the bishop can only take us so far. We get into serious trouble when we are attracted to a personality and not to a commitment to follow Christ wherever he goes. The bishop’s successors are as yet unknown, but when our religious submission is to the ideal of Christ speaking in the Church, then the personality of those successors becomes less significant to the commitment we are making.
Having examined the content of the promise, it may now be helpful to briefly look at ways in which this promise might be compromised or made more difficult. Of course, challenges to obedience are as individual as those who make promises, but some trends might easily be delineated. I see four: Residual narcissism, Cacophony, Pride, and a Lack of Respect.
First, residual narcissism. We hear a great deal about narcissism today. We know that a clinical diagnosis of narcissism as a personality disorder is relatively rare. Residual narcissism, however is much more prevalent and is often the outcome of the conditioning of a culture bent on radical individualism and selfishness. Clerical circles seem to be awakening to the effects of narcissism in the lives of priests in ways previously un recognized. Very simply, narcissism is the inability to view the world outside of one’s self. It is chronic selfishness, at times, seemingly incurable self reference. Everything in my world view proceeds from my particular interests or the ways in which phenomena impact me. Everything must be created in my image, all activities should center on me. At some level we find chronic narcissism humorous. The old adage of, “let’s stop talking about me, let’s talk about you. What do you think of me?” is a bit tired but certainly also has a ring of truth in it. Narcissism, when it can be overcome, is very difficult to overcome. It lies at the heart of other modern chronic conditions such as pornography and even overweeing social networking. Narcissism, by its nature threatens relationships. Narcissism is problematic for the average person, it is fatal to priesthood. A person with chronic narcissistic tendencies cannot be a priest because priesthood requires a perspective of the other, a regard for the other, a respect for the other. Priesthood is about compassion, suffering with the other. A personality that allows for neither suffering nor the other cannot effectively be a priest. Narcissists cannot make a meaningful promise of obedience because there is no ability to truly listen and respect someone else. The narcissist may look obedient, he may even look hypervigilant in obedience, but it only works as long as he is satisfied with the outcome. Any challenge to the narcissistic worldview and the priest revolts. Narcissism has many forms but intellectual narcissism is perhaps the most dangerous for the priest. I know more than anyone else. I know better than anyone, including my bishop, including the Church, including Christ.
Second cacophony. I cannot hear the authentic voice of Christ speaking through the Church and through the bishop if I surround myself with other voices, if I inundate my world with sounds that conflict and cause consternation in my ability to hear and to listen. Simplicity is required for authentic hearing. How often, when trying to pay attention to a particular speaker have we had to silent errant voices around us? A good question to ask ourselves is: What do I pay attention to in my daily life? What vies for my attention? It is hard to hear the voice of Christ when our soundscapes are filled with the cacophony of lies, of popular culture, of competing voices. We cannot listen to Christ if we are continually trying to tune our ears to other musics, perpetually trying to get reception on stations inimical with our vocations as Christians. Obedience in the Church and in the Sacrament of Holy Orders is geared to one goal: to make us saints. Pope Benedict recently said to Catholic students: “When I invite you to become saints, I am asking you not to be content with second best. I am asking you not to pursue one limited goal and ignore all the others.” Christ in his mysteries, when we truly attend to his mysteries, opens our horizons in ways that external cacophony never can.
Third, Pride. In the world of the priest, pride often manifests in our inability to say we were wrong. Perhaps this is a particular masculine issue as well. No promise of obedience is ever perfectly lived any more than discipleship is ever perfectly lived. We err. Virtue lies not in ever erring but in our ability to admit we were wrong and to make amends. Often we make serious mistakes in following through with our obedience. Those serious mistakes become grave errors when we will not admit our fault. My experience has been that many who leave the priesthood do so because their pride has been hurt in having their opinions overruled by the authentic teaching office of the bishop.
Finally, lack of respect. Respect from the Latin, respectus literarily means to look again or to regard. It means taking more than a cursory glance at a thing or trying to sum up a complex reality with a simple formula. Respect is an ideal that applies to almost every relationship we have. It may indeed be said to be at the very heart of the Church’s sacramental understanding. “Things are more than they seem to be” is an ideal that I apply in almost every pastoral circumstance. I look for depth. I search for breadth. I look beyond the obvious. I do not take everything for face value Lack of respect is a failure to look again, to contemplate what we are doing, to make hasty judgments. Decisions about how to proceed in a pastoral environment must be made carefully and reflectively. When I am in doubt, it is my responsibility to consult others, particularly when I am in a relationship of obedience with the others. A lack of respect is manifested in my not caring about what the opinions of those significant voices might be, or to even acknowledge their significance in my life. It is to live a superficial life.

What do these reflections on the promise of obedience mean for us here and now? I hope one message I have communicated this morning is that we are all under obedience, we are all necessarily in relationship. At the anthropological level, we are under obedience to the nature of our human being. At the discipleship level we are under obedience to the Word of God with whom we have come into relationship through the sacraments of initiation. I cannot deny this obedience if I am to maintain integrity as a Christian. As a seminarian, you are already preparing for the particular form of obedience that comes with Holy Orders. Here in this seminary, we prepare for this listening, this intensity of relationship and this respect. It is not possible to make a meaningful promise of obedience on the day of ordination, if we have never considered the consequences of obedience in our daily lives. How do we interact here every day? Do we give the staff and faculty, men and women who are acting even now on behalf of your bishops the benefit of the doubt? Do we have what Saint Benedict called the “ready step of obedience”? Or is our attitude one of constant criticism and questioning? Do we dissent first and reflect later? Our attitude of obedience, even here is not nourished by a personal affiliation or friendship with the staff. Our attitude of obedience is nourished by my willingness to listen to the voice of the Lord. It is putting Christ in the center of my formation by putting Christ in the center of my life. Of course, this is what we do here. This is what we are aiming for here. This is what we must accomplish here, recognizing our need for continued growth and development. Obedience as understood in the sense in which we mean it in Holy Orders is not a new obedience. it is a fine tuning, a nuancing of the obedience we owe to Christ, and to the obedience that is inscribed in every human heart. In this way we understand that obedience can only make sense in the context of prayer. Prayer is the solidification of that primary obedience, that primary relationship that gives all particular forms of obedience meaning. If I do not pray, I cannot make sense of hte promise of obedience, because it has no context. If I pray, then obedience takes care of itself because I have already put myself, trained myself to put myself at the disposal of someone greater than myself. The mighty God through whom all our lives gain meaning, through whom all our hearing and listening gains wisdom. To this mighty God be all glory and power in the Church, now and forever.

A Treatise on Homiletic Method by Fr. Denis Robinson, OSB
Monday – O no I have to preach on Thursday
I mean, Hurray I get to preach on Thursday
Wonder what the readings are? IPhone - Enter Password – Tap, Tap, Tap, Tap
Good, Safari, Google, USCCB Teadings – No Readings (fat thumbs)
Good, October, wait November, wonder what happened to October
Focus, Focus - Expand Expand
November 4 Good, Expand, Expand
Scroll Down - Gospel of Luke, Chapter 15, Lost sheep, lost coin
Rats - Didn’t I preach on that a few weeks ago?
Foolish Shepherd, Foolish Woman, Foolish God – Yada, Yada, Yada
Darn – Anything else – Probably not
Scroll up – First Reading
Brothers and Sisters – We are the circumcision - What – I don’t think so
Scroll down
Last resort – Psalm
Generic, Generic, Generic – Sorry God
O Feast day – Charles Borommeo
Ouch – He who put the bore back in Romeo
Archbishop of Milan I hate Milan – nice cathedral though
Focus - Ah Ha - Maybe there’s a deacon preaching
Run upstairs because I can never find that schedule – Note to new secretary
Take the elevator – Jiminy Christmas I’m fat
Why are those organ builders making so much noise?
O my they have the cabinet on the thing – moving fast
Focus - Rats – Wessmann Maybe I could threaten a deacon
Back downstairs - Next – Next – Next – Wait Archbishop Rodi- Outlook Open
Tarn – He’s leaving after morning prayer – OK - Running out of time - Three to five minutes
This is going to be a complete disaster
What a bust, what a loss, what a …
And I used to be such a good preacher …
Wait a second – wait a cotton-picking second – Where’s that phone
Scroll – scroll - scroll
What did St. Paul say?
Whatever gains I had,
these I have come to consider a loss because of Christ.
More than that, I even consider everything as a loss
because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

There is a crucifix in my office that is around 300 years old. It is quite beautiful and distinctive in that it represents Jesus on the cross with his arms straight above his head rather than extended out to his sides. Historically, this style has been called a “Jansenist” crucifix because the Jansenists, who were at the height of their power when this particular crucifix was carved, believed that narrow was the way to salvation. Only a few, the elect would be saved, and all the others were doomed to eternal destruction.
Jesus said: Strive to enter through the narrow gate.
But, here’s the thing. A gate or a door is only as narrow as the number of people trying to get through it. In other words, a door can be physically quite narrow, but if it is only meant for a single individual or a few folks, well, it works just fine.
A gate becomes narrower and narrower the more folks trying to get through it.
Think about a line at airport security when only one x-ray machine is functional
Think about the mob scene in an auditorium or a parking garage when everyone is trying to get in or out at the same time.
Strive to enter through the narrow gate. And sometimes it is striving because we can’t get through without the others.
Is the gate narrow or is the guest list just big
Our gate to salvation is open to us, and to all and Jesus invites everyone to enter. This is an important theme in the Gospel, a Gospel struggling with the reality of who is in and who is out.
First or last, last or first, the message of Jesus is simple: get in
And who is with us?
The poor, lame hungry homeless, immigrant, foreigner, perplexed, wealthy, ragged, elderly, unborn, children, parents, teachers, students, living, dying, laughing, crying, stern, silly, yellow, brown, shades between, colorful, bland, peaceful, fighting, fat and thin and in between, cross and smiling, wimpy and athletic, smart and dim, rebellious, docile, open, closed, tired, energetic, reaching, grasping, wandering, begging, upright, slouching, everything, everything, everyone, everyone
What a crowd
This way folks
Come in everyone
Get on board
Get through the door
No need to push or shove
Cooperate, help each other out now
Plenty of time, East and west, north and south
Everyone is welcome
Everyone with fear of God and faith approach.
And once through the gate, breath a sigh of relief for there is plenty of space on the other side.

The crown of righteousness awaits me,
which the Lord, the just judge,
will award to me on that day, and not only to me,
but to all who have longed for his appearance.
The Pharisees might well have believed that these words were spoken about them
Undoubtedly, they did believe it
But the Pharisees had a problem, a problem Jesus points to repeatedly in the Gospels.
The problem with the Pharisees was that they believed that life was really simple.
Difficult, surely, but essentially simple.
Only one thing was needed for success: Follow the Law.
And there was a Law for everything, how to get up in the morning, how to get dressed, how to eat, how to work, how to pray, how to raise a family, how to wash dishes, how to procreate, how to get sick and how to die. Pay your tithes, fast twice a week and there you are. Righteous. It was difficult to live a good pharisaical life, but ultimately quite simple.
Follow the Law to the letter and you will have in your possession all the holiness you can possibly handle. All the holiness you could possibly need
And the Pharisees were very successful.
They were successful because they appealed to a craven desire of humanity for one thing above all others: Control.
We love control.
Control lets us in on what’s what, who’s in, who’s out, where we should be, when we should x and when we should y, what others are doing or should be doing.
Control helps us to put the world into boxes, neat, labeled boxes that organize our aimless existences into the genus and species of neatly arranged specimens of life.
Control gives us power by enabling us to predict and maintain.
Control gives us the authority to shut others out or welcome them in according to our neatly perceived categories.
Control ultimately makes us omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, gods. And our deification would undoubtedly be complete …
If only life were simpler
If only there was a rule
If only a formula could be maintained.
If only there was a Law to follow.
But we know, we know don’t we, that while there are categories, corollaries, catchphrases,
There is also chaos
Chaos that looks like fumbling for words as you hastily turn the pages of the ritual book, looking for something to say to the 27 year old mother who is dying of cancer in the bed in front of you while her husband and 4 year old son look on helplessly. hopelessly
Chaos that looks like randomness in the up and down quarks of our quantum imaginations, a universe that propels itself ever onward, helplessly, hopelessly
Chaos that sounds like the relentless ticking of a clock as you sit with a mother and father as they confront the drug addiction of their 17 year old son. He cannot speak. He is in shock. He is frozen with the deepening paralysis of someone knowing. He cannot respond and so time ticks, ticks away as you all sit helplessly, hopelessly
Chaos that feels like the trickle of cold water down your spine, the cold water of recognition as you face the same temptation again and again, that secret part of yourself that simply cannot go away, but cannot be ignored. After forty years it continues to rise up in you like flood waters and the chill of shame, known all too well for all too long makes you wonder helplessly, hopelessly if there ever will be, ever can be forgiveness
Chaos that works like a vice of guilt and pain inflicting old memories, incising old wounds, igniting old flames that will never die, that cannot be fixed, cannot be controlled, leaving our family members, our parishioners, our friends wandering helplessly, hopelessly toward Babylon
How foolish I was to think that it could all be fixed, all of this chaos could be repaired if I just had the right words, the right prescription, the right answer, the right box.
And in the midst of this chaos what can our stance be? Like the tax collector, to look down, to beat our breasts, to say Lord have mercy on me, a control freak, a Pharisee, a sinner.
And to hopefully realize that the Lord hears the cry of the poor, and we are the poor
And in this stance we are reminded of one thing, one supremely important thing; God is the only one in control
God is in control of all our irrational fears, all our desperate unknowns, all our duplicitous discernments, all our tumultuous turmoil
God is in control of everything in our lives, our hurts and pains, our inclinations, our habits, our addictions and our healing
God is in control of our health, our well-being, our sanity, our sanctity
God is in control of our breath, our beating hearts, our generating minds
God is in control because God is in the chaos, our chaos is his control
Our lawlessness is his benevolence
Our bewilderment, his wisdom
Our sin is God’s opportunity, the opportunity to tell us that we cannot control everything, that we depend upon him, his power, his goodness, his mercy
That is what we call mystery. Today, every day we gather here, we stand before a great mystery, the mystery of God’s involvement with our world.
We like to control it, this mystery, what happens here. We certainly have our Laws, our tastes, our stylistic sensibilities. We have liturgists, theologians, ministers. We have the rules and we have the desire to make those rules stick. We seem ultimately to be in control, until chaos breaks in and standing with impunity before God and every person here, the priest holds up what in every controlled environment would seem to be mere bread, common wine and say:
Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Happy are those who are called to this supper.
Then, chaos breaks out, our control is lost, we are seized and possessed by the Body of Christ and we are God’s chosen ones, happy indeed. And only in the chaotic aftermath of the mysterium fidei can we truly say, truly know that:
the crown of righteousness awaits me,
which the Lord, the just judge,
will award to me on that day, and not only to me,
but to all who have longed for his appearance.

There can be no question that the priesthood is a complex reality. In the seminary, we approach it from a variety of angles: theological, pastoral, spiritual and human. Each angle gives us new insight, an insight that likewise grows as our experience of the priesthood deepens and broadens. Archbishop Sheen once remarked: “‘Increase and multiply’ is a law of sacerdotal life no less than biological life.” (The Priest Is Not His Own, 57). While Sheen was speaking of the question of spiritual generation in the priest’s ministry, the observation is no less valid of the evolving understanding of the priesthood in the life of the seminarian and, indeed, of the priest throughout his life. Our appreciation of the priesthood must continue to grow and change. “Growth is the only evidence of life,” as Blessed John Henry Newman has observed. This evolution of priestly realization is also innate in the rites that create the priest. The identity of the priest naturally progresses through the various ministries, candidacy, diaconate and, finally, presbyteral ordination.
In the last conference, I looked rather carefully at the resolutions made by the deacon at his ordination. There is so much of significance in the diaconate ordination, including constitutive elements of the priesthood, the promise of celibacy and the Liturgy of the Hours being the most prominent. In this conference, I would like to turn to the particular resolutions made by the priest. In our context, we speak most often of a transitional diaconate. While the permanent diaconate, also a prominent feature of the Saint Meinrad landscape, ultimately finds its spiritual energy in the promises we discussed several weeks ago, those ordained to the transitional diaconate know that the resolutions made at deacon ordination are evolving resolutions; they will be augmented by the future ordination to the priesthood. They are by no means abrogated. The promise to pray the Liturgy of the Hours and the promise of celibacy remain the foundation of what will be additionally taken on with priesthood.
The transitional deacon must prepare himself for a strengthening of resolve with new promises. These new promises continue to show forth the nature of priestly life and spirituality. With presbyteral ordination, the deacon becomes an even more public person, a man for the Church. This is true because, as a priest, he stands at the very fulcrum of the Church’s life, the sacrifice of the Eucharist.
Before I reflect on the particular promises of the presbyteral order, I would like to offer a few insights about the nature of this public person. The priest affects the lives of his parishioners in profound ways, ways that may not always be readily apparent. We have heard it stated in many forums that the priest is a public person and must always act accordingly. The priest, however, is more than a public person in the sense of celebrities or politicians. The priest is a man whose engagement with the public, that is, the people, is of a profound nature. The priest is a man who is scrutinized and studied by the people not because his life is interesting in itself, but because his life is presented as an icon of discipleship. Our Holy Father Pope Benedict has expressed this well:
The priest is a man of prayer, a man of forgiveness, a man who receives and celebrates the sacraments as acts of prayer and encounter with the Lord. He is a man of charity, lived and practiced, thus all the simple acts, conversion, encounter, everything that needs to be done, become spiritual acts in communion with Christ. (Meeting with the Clergy of the Diocese of Rome, 2007)
These acts are also acts meant to be observed by others. In his prayer, in his moral life, in his example of Christian living, everything is observed not because of prurience or any other base motive, but because the priest has presented himself as an example for others. He is an icon of discipleship. He shows himself as one who can live the life of the Gospel, not perfectly but intentionally. His life shows the people that it is possible. He is also a man of the Church. He faithfully represents the Church and never represents any ideas or opinions that, as his own, constitute a challenge to the Church’s way of thinking and acting. As a public man of the Church, he cannot act contrary to the laws and the spirit of the Church. He is watched. He is evaluated and, even when the people cannot quite give expression to their misgivings, they know when he is inauthentic. They know. We live today in a culture accustomed to casual communication. Facebook, My Space and other social networking tools give us access to easy formats by which we can express our opinions and ideas. A seminarian or a priest might easily be tempted to make a comment or express an opinion on the wall of Facebook that he would never consider saying in a classroom or in the pulpit. After all, Facebook is “just among friends,” and yet, millions of persons have access to these comments, many times more than would be the case in any parish environment.
Our thoughts and our teachings are analyzed, taken apart and taken to heart. As the poet Emily Dickinson once wrote: “We must be careful what we say, no bird resumes its egg.” (Letters of Emily Dickinson). Is this observation meant to instill some kind of paranoia or, worse, to silence the authentic voice of the priest in his mission to “Go out to all the world and tell the Good News”? By no means. Nevertheless, the priest must be constantly aware of that with which he is dealing. As priests, we are touching people’s souls; we are trafficking in the realm of their immortality. It is one thing to offer my opinion about the quality of the latest film; it is another to comment on Church teaching or liturgical practice when those teachings have the power to alter people’s lives. As priests, we have the power to alter people’s lives, their eternal lives, and that must give us pause; it must give us a sense of heightened responsibility.
With ordination, we are taking on a new identity, an identity that can never be set aside. I cannot begin to instill in you an awareness of the tremendous damage done by priests who ask others to listen intently to their opinions about the Church and its teachings and then walk away, leaving a confused public to sort through what is authentic and inauthentic in their words. There is no room in the Church today for priests who present themselves as the saviors of the Church. There is one savior, our Lord Jesus Christ. It is His message that our public ministry must tirelessly proclaim. In the words of St. John the Baptist: “He must increase, while I must decrease.”
With this insight into the public nature of what we are doing, I turn now to the resolutions of the Rite of Ordination for Presbyters.

Do you resolve to exercise the ministry of the word worthily and wisely, preaching the Gospel and teaching the Catholic faith?
The first resolution seems to be, at least at first glance, in the intellectual mode. It focuses on the word. And yet, perhaps the expression “ministry of the word” is more profound. While the word might refer to the “logos” of our faith, it might equally refer to the second person of the Holy Trinity. As priests, we are called to exercise the ministry of the Word, of Jesus Christ. Pope Benedict has remarked: “The first imperative of the priest is to be a man of God in the sense of a man in friendship with Christ.” (Meeting with the Clergy of the Dioceses of Belluno-Feltere and Treviso, 2007)
This can only be accomplished through a complete identity with Christ the Word. In our lives as disciples, many “words” compete for our attention. Some of these words are spoken internally, the scripts that we learn in childhood and tend to rehearse throughout our lives. We are constantly mulling over such scripted words as “unworthy,” “stupid,” “broken” and a host of others, each unique to our personal situations. Some of these scripted words may be near the surface of our consciousness and some may be deeply embedded in our psychological makeup, affecting our lives in adverse ways, robber-like against our knowledge and will. Some of these competing words come from our socialization and conditioning. The scripts of our cultural environment have a strong hold over us; they often call for unqualified allegiance, even when we know, at least intuitively, that they are at odds with what we profess as Christians and as Catholics.
In childhood, we might refer to this as the words spoken by peer pressure. Peer pressure does not evaporate as we grow older; it merely becomes more sophisticated. It is always pressure. As the historian Christopher Dawson has expressed: “Every society rests in the last resort on the recognition of common principles and common ideals, and if it makes no moral or spiritual appeal to the loyalty of its members, it must inevitably fall to pieces.” What is left in the aftermath of this disintegration of the social word than the ministry of the Word? Internally or externally, we give our attention to these words and yet the Word desires so completely to break into our lives.
The exercise of the ministry of the word faithfully and wisely means, first and foremost, our ability to filter all words that do not speak to us that single syllable that alone has meaning in the heart of the priest: Christ. There is only one word for us to authentically speak and that is Christ. Christ must be everything and our ministry of that word becomes our sole direction, our singular purpose. I exercise the ministry worthily when I put away all false representations of allegiance. “You call me Lord and teacher and you are right, for so I am” (John 13:13). And yet, as Cardinal Von Balthasar has noted: “It is in us that Jesus wants to stand before the Father, indeed, in us that he wants to be in the Father.” (Credo, 41). I am worthy of the ministry (as much as I can be worthy of the ministry) insofar as I live with an undivided heart. The landscape of my heart must be totally for Christ and the expanses of my mind and my intellect, the horizons of my service will be open and pure.
As much as that word is compartmentalized, there is my unworthiness. Worthiness to minster the Word does not stem from living a blameless life. There are no blameless lives. There are no lives in which the cacophony of other wordiness does not interfere with a pure attention to the voice of God. We all live conflicted lives. We all live lives of mixed motives. We all live sinful lives. That is not the question. We are not, on our own, worthy of the ministry of the word. But God makes us worthy and we participate in that divine action by our desire. As much as I desire to live a secret life or a double life, I am truly not worthy. As much as I desire to make my life as a priest an open book, even in the midst of authentically acknowledging my need for further growth, greater grace, I have been found worthy.
In the rite of ordination, after the call of the candidate, the bishop inquires of the one who has acted on behalf of the Church in issuing the call if the candidate has been found worthy. There is a testimony on his behalf that he has been found worthy. Another way to phrase this interchange that gets at the heart of the spirituality of the priest is that he has been found humble, humble enough to know himself, humble enough to acknowledge his faults, humble enough to live a transparent life.
The candidate for priestly orders resolves also to exercise his ministry wisely. Wisdom, in this context, is intimately related to worthiness. Worthiness is directed toward the development of the candidate’s personal character. Wisdom is directed outward. What is this wisdom? It is the understanding that what is within me (if I can authentically claim what is within me) is also within those whom I serve in the ministry of the word. We do not pastor perfect sheep. There is no perfection in the flock. Nor can we present ourselves as perfect pastors. The wise shepherd does not expect the flock to be perfect; rather he knows in an intimate way their imperfections. He has conditioned himself to this by his own introspection, his own self-awareness.
Pastors can get into real trouble when they fail to acknowledge the real situations of their flocks. Trouble can only ensue when a pastor presents himself as faultless, minister of an idealized church and then expects the flock to either conform or be weeded out. That is not to say we do not need ideals; again, we do, but we never reach the ideal without first wading through the mire, both internally and externally. We are wise pastors when we know the sheep and help them along because we know our selves and know how God has helped us along. Ministry that is worthy and wise is the ministry of real men among real men and women. Preaching and teaching can only proceed from this intimate knowledge. All other preaching and teaching will be perceived as false, façade, mere Potemkin villages of authentic discipleship.
In the seminary, we certainly practice preaching and teaching. These are essential communication skills for the priest. At another level, however, the seminary must also be a seedbed of worthiness and wisdom. Regarding worthiness, as I have stated many times before, it is necessary to inculcate here the ability to express true humility through transparency. What does this transparency look like but the development of mature character. As J.C. Watts has expressed so eloquently: “Character is doing the right thing when nobody’s looking. There are too many people who think that the only thing that’s right is to get by, and the only thing that’s wrong is to get caught.” The honesty that this character formation necessitates can only happen in an atmosphere of mutual trust and respect. As pastor, it is essential for me to set the tone. As a staff, we are called to be authentic examples of this. We trust one another and we have respect for one another when we honestly communicate.
One way in which we do this is through our annual self-evaluation process. Ideally, the seminarian should never hear anything in that process from the evaluation team members that he has not already heard many times from his dean, the vice rector or the rector. No seminarian should be taken off guard by what appears in the evaluation. Likewise, the staff should never be taken off guard by what happens in the evaluation. If I reveal in the evaluation something that I have never revealed before in the external forum, that indicates a lack of transparency. Wisdom and worthiness are not qualities that happen overnight; they are not the magical results of ordination, rather with the author of proverbs we know: “By wisdom a house is built, and through understanding it is established; through knowledge its rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures” (Proverbs 24:3-4) and “My son, preserve sound judgment and discernment, do not let them out of your sight; they will be life for you, an ornament to grace your neck. Then you will go on your way in safety, and your foot will not stumble” (Proverbs 3:21-23).

Do you resolve to celebrate faithfully and reverently, in accord with the Church’s tradition, the mysteries of Christ, especially the sacrifice of the Eucharist and the sacrament of Reconciliation, for the glory of God and the sanctification of the Christian people?
Here we find the particular ministry of the priest: The sacrifice of the Eucharist and the sacrament of Reconciliation. These are the responsibilities of the priest and so the character of priestly spirituality must be built around these responsibilities. What does it mean to promise to faithfully and reverently celebrate the sacrifice of the Eucharist? It entails a deep commitment to the reality of the Eucharist and its place in the life of the world. As the Holy Father has remarked, the secret of the priest’s sanctification lies precisely in the Eucharist: “…the priest must be first and foremost an adorer who contemplates the Eucharist” (Angelus, 18 September 2005). The priest is called through his priestly ministry and identity to continually point to the significance of the Eucharistic sacrifice for the life of the world. He can never, by word or action or attitude, indicate any marginality of this central truth of our faith. We need the Eucharist. The world needs the Eucharist because it needs Christ. The sacrifice of the Eucharist as Christus prologatus is the presence of God in the life of the world. This centrality is real and must be realized whether we are believers or not.
There is nothing more central to the world than the presence of Christ. Do we always realize that or do we trivialize the importance of the sacrament by making its celebration just another aspect of our day? The developing spirituality of the priest must be a spirituality centered on the Eucharistic Christ. As stated in Presbyterorum Ordinis: “All ecclesiastical ministries and works of the apostolate are bound up with the Eucharist and are directed towards it [14]. For in the most blessed Eucharist is contained the whole spiritual good of the Church, [15] namely Christ himself our Pasch, and the living bread which gives life to men through his flesh—that flesh which is given life and gives life through the Holy Spirit.” This is accomplished, first and foremost, by paying attention to the quality of our celebration of the Holy Mass each day. Critical or judgmental attitudes about the Eucharistic celebration can have the effect of devaluing the central mystery that we are acknowledging. Refusal to participate in this or that aspect of the Holy Mass because it does not suit my particular liturgical taste is insulting to the presence of the Divine Savior on the altar, in the Word, in the ministerial priesthood and in the assembly. Critical and judgmental attitudes inject a decided selfishness into the Mass.
The Eucharistic spirituality of the priest is also cultivated in the daily Holy Hour. In the words of Pope John Paul II: “Our communal worship at Mass must go together with our personal worship of Jesus in Eucharistic adoration in order that our love may be complete.” (Pope John Paul II, Redemptionis Hominis). The Holy Hour is a privileged time not only because it is a time spent with our Lord in silence and reverence, but also because the face-to-face encounter with Christ in the tabernacle or in the monstrance is a reminder of the truth that He is also present in palpable ways outside of the chapel. Our encounter with Christ in the privileged Holy Hour is a rehearsal for additional encounters made each day in more mundane but equally sacred settings: the nursing home, the parish school, the RCIA group and dozens of others.
There is a beautiful image at the end of Robert Hugh Benson’s novel, The Lord of the World, of the end of time and all of creation being drawn into the Lord present on the altar in the monstrance. The cosmic implications of the Eucharist draw all of us into its power. What a privilege and responsibility to be the custodians of that sacramental presence. How can the entirety of our lives not be devoted to its celebration? Eucharistic spirituality cultivated in the seminarian and realized in the life of the priest is also the ability to closely identify oneself with the Christ whom we make present in the sacrifice of the altar. “This is my body. This is my blood” are not words we speak only on behalf of Christ, but words that also echo our commitment to be in persona Christi, to offer ourselves, our body and blood, for the people. Fr. Stephen Rosetti has commented: “The priest at the altar dies and rises with Jesus.” (Born of the Eucharist, 97). Eucharistic spirituality is the cultivation of a healthy sacrificial spirituality in the sense of not always putting my own needs first, of being willing to go the extra mile, of carrying the cross and encouraging others. If there is no cost to priesthood, then there is probably not a very authentic expression of the priesthood. True, we must take care of ourselves, but at what point does self-care become an attitude of privilege, entitlement or comfort?
The second aspect of this resolution is faithfully celebrating the sacrament of Reconciliation. Quite obviously, this means the need to hear sacramental confessions and offer absolution. We know how much the world is in need of this sacrament and we also know how little it is sometimes used. Reconciliation is a central ministry of the priest. It is also tied to the Eucharist. We bring together in order to make the body of Christ a real presence among us. Offering the sacrament of Reconciliation is necessary for the exercise of authentic priesthood. “Priests must encourage the faithful to come to the sacrament of Penance and must make themselves available to celebrate this sacrament each time Christians reasonably ask for it” (CCC 1494). Canon law requires the priest to regularly participate in this sacrament (CJC, 276, 5). No priest can ever refuse to hear a confession unless he prohibited from doing so because of particular relationships (for example, being rector of a seminary). Priests must make themselves available for the celebration of this sacrament when it is needed and required.
Reconciliation is also a central attitude of the priest. In order to be a worthy minister of God’s forgiveness, I need to experience that forgiveness in my life. My participation in the sacrament of Reconciliation is a necessary precursor to my ability to be a good confessor. Again in Presbyterorum Ordinis we read: The priest receives grace for the healing of human weakness from the holiness of Christ, who became for us a high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinner.” Therefore, cultivation of the attitude of reconciliation is also necessary outside of the formal confines of the Church’s sacramental system. Am I an agent of peace and reconciliation in the community or am I continually the cause of division? Gossip, the spreading of false or unsubstantiated rumors, the inability to avoid controversy and drama, a persistent critical attitude, the inability to confront others in charity, the inability to receive correction, talking about people behind their backs, publicly processing difficulties to all willing to listen to my complaints: all of these are contraindications of the ability to cultivate the attitude of reconciliation essential to the ministry of the priest. How can I effectively preach and announce in the confessional the joy of heaven when I am forever raising hell behind the scenes?
Eucharist and reconciliation are the foundations of priestly life and spirituality. We cultivate our awareness of these sacraments as necessary precursors to celebrating them. Why? The resolution also tells us this: for the glory of God and the sanctification of the people. Not for our glory do we cultivate and celebrate, but because God gives us an agency to announce His Glory for the sanctification of His people. God gives us the agency. It is a profound responsibility when we see the centrality of these sacraments to the life of the world. In the words of St. Paul: “To him alone be glory in the Church, now and forever.”
Do you resolve to implore with us God’s mercy upon the people entrusted to your care by observing the command to pray without ceasing?
Pray without ceasing. St. Paul’s injunction in the first letter to the Thessalonians (5:17) is central to the life and ministry of the priest. At one level, this promise has already been made in the promise of the deacon to pray the Liturgy of the Hours. Here the stakes are raised a little higher. While the Liturgy of the Hours remains at the core of clerical responsibility by virtue of its being the prayer of the Church, the command to pray without ceasing goes further. The priest is called to implore God’s mercy upon the people. The direction of our lives is toward God through the people whom we serve. We live with a constant awareness of two things: the needs of those whom we serve and the greatness of God to fulfill those needs. The priest acts as a living conduit between these realities. First, the spirituality of the priest is directed toward an awareness of the needs of the people. We must know them. We must respect them. We must honor them precisely in their brokenness. The priest is privileged to know the inner lives of the people God has given him to serve. We know their fears, their pain, their pasts, their addictions, their sins, their confusions, their aspirations, their dreams and their disappointments.
Our task is to attend to these realities. We must live among those whom we serve. We must be willing to hear them, open to listening and responding. “I am the Good Shepherd. I know my sheep and they know me” (John 10:27). This aspect of priestly spirituality prohibits us ever sending messages that they are not welcome, that we are not willing. Our response to all of these realities is to bring them to God. We cannot solve the problems of the people. As your pastor in this community, I cannot solve every dilemma you have. I can bring you to someone who can, Jesus the Lord. The life of the priest, then, is a life of spiritual referral. We constantly call upon the name of the Lord. We pray without ceasing from the midst of life’s turmoil’s, tragedies and triumphs. In all things, we give God the glory for He intends to do so much for us. Likewise, we witness the efficacy of this conducting among the people by what God has done for us. If we are not convinced that God is the author and caretaker of all in our lives, then we will not be very credible witnesses to His power in the lives of others. The exhortation of the first letter of St. Peter applies beautifully here:
Tend the flock of God that is your charge, not by constraint but willingly, not for shameful gain but eagerly,
[3] not as domineering over those in your charge but being examples to the flock.
[4] And when the chief Shepherd is manifested you will obtain the unfading crown of glory.
[5] Likewise you that are younger be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
[6] Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that in due time he may exalt you.
[7] Cast all your anxieties on him, for he cares about you.
[8] Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking some one to devour.
[9] Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experience of suffering is required of your brotherhood throughout the world.
[10] And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, establish, and strengthen you.
[11] To him be the dominion for ever and ever.

Do your resolve to be united more closely every day to Christ the High Priest, who offered himself for us to the Father as a pure sacrifice, and with him to consecrate yourself to God for the salvation of all?
How can we hope to do this? We are asked, in no uncertain terms, to consecrate ourselves completely to God. What does this imply? One thing I believe: by little and by little, less of the exasperating stumbling block of ego to inhibit the fulfillment of our mission. Again Archbishop Sheen: “The priest is not only the shepherd who cares for his sheep, he is also the lamb who is offered in caring for them.” (The Priest Is Not His Own, 29). How is this sacrificial nature of the priesthood realized? I would say in three distinct ways: (1) by the priest’s simplicity of life; (2) by his openness to serve; and (3) by his singleheartedness. The priesthood must be lived with a simplicity that is observable. Here I do not mean to imply that simplicity is merely a matter of putting away material possessions. Material possessions play a part in simplicity of life, without a doubt, but true simplicity of life is not attained merely by possessing little. There are many bitter and ideologically confused priests living in bare rooms.
True simplicity of life is obtained by detachment. The philosopher Simone Weil has said: “There is no detachment where there is no pain. And there is no pain endured without hatred or lying unless detachment is present too.” We cannot hope to achieve the sacrificial aspects of priestly service without regret, without hatred or lying, if we cannot separate ourselves from that which, at times, we view as most essential to ourselves, our opinions, our personal truths and our so-called freedoms. Bede Griffiths said: “[Simplicity] is detachment from the self. This is the most radical detachment of all. But what is the self? The self is the principle of reason and responsibility in us. It is the root of freedom, it is what makes us men.” It is not necessarily what makes us saints. Detachment and simplicity, which lead to a kind of interior martyrdom, guide us to God because they instill in us a desire for God alone. Detachment means putting aside all kinds of ambition, self-determination and self-serving, striving after a single goal, the goal of St. Paul in the letter to the Galatians: “It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians, 2, 20). This desire is a kind of self-immolation, and by that I mean not an immolation of the authentic and wonderful aspects of our personalities. Detachment and self-denial are not denials of my personal charms, charisms and perhaps quirks. They are rather a desire to turn the particularity of my personal character to the service of God alone.
Second, this sacrificial quality is achieved by our openness to serve, truly serve, the needs of others. As I stated above, part of this recognition of the needs of the flock is a recognition of their desires. To serve the needs of others means that I serve them in their needs and not in my own. True, I must lead. I must provide a vision, but I cannot force that vision on an unwilling flock when they are languishing in their own questions, problems and authentic pastoral desires. It is the needs of the flock that I must serve. My attitude as a pastor will make all the difference in the way I will serve them. How open am I? Let’s consider that in the context of what we must do here. What do my brothers need and how willing am I to listen to those needs? As I stated in the opening conference for this year, you have ample opportunities to serve real pastoral needs in this community. Can we begin to practice the art of sacrificial priesthood by authentically giving ourselves in service to those real needs? “If we do not love a brother, whom we have seen, we cannot love God, whom we have not seen.” In the words of the Roman playwright, Terence: “Charity begins at home.”
Finally, a sacrificial priesthood is governed by singleheartedness. The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins once said: “Christ plays in ten thousand places, lovely in eyes and limbs not his – to the Father through the feature of men’s faces.” Singleheartedness is not the dogged stubbornness of only seeking commerce with the sacred, but in finding the sacred in the daily distillation of human life. It is easy enough to choose the things of this world that are pleasing to my spiritual sensibilities and live among them, detaching myself from the flotsam and jetsam of reality. It is more difficult to find myself immersed in the quicksand of culture and find God’s arms there. Our message is a message that the reality of God pervades every aspect of His creation. Our hearts are restless, however, because that reality has been coated, painted over, disguised. God wants to shine forth in His creation and our determination to be instruments of that illumination, monstrances of the divine persona showing forth the presence of God in every circumstance is the sacrifice we must make to live authentic priesthoods.
We cannot become imbued with the cynicism of the world. We must be beacons of hope and understanding, calling forth from the depths of the human experience the light of Christ, a light that burns in all men and women, a light we must be convinced burns in us. We cannot do this alone, but we can do it together; we can support and encourage one another in dark times, through stormy days. We can lift one another up in the ecstasy of prayer and in the simplicity of true care, concern, love. We can be Christ for one another rather than agents of the critical and unyielding devil. We can love. We can love with all our hearts. God has given us the promise of single hearts, single and holy for Him and for our brothers and sisters. He has given us the materials to make us saints and to call us into that divine assembly. Give Him glory today. Love Him today in the faces of one another. Become vessels of sacrificial love today, vessels like that most precious of all disciples, the mother of priests, Our Blessed Lady.
Hail Holy Queen…

The Word of God is not chained
I spent a good bit of time last week pondering today’s readings. This passage from Second Timothy stood out for me, especially in light of the feast yesterday of my patron, St. Denis. The letters to Timothy are pastoral letters in the truest sense, they speak to the hearts of pastors. They speak the Truth in the boldest way and so, there it is, a central tenant of our faith
The Word of God is not chained
I have been devoted to St. Denis for many years, even before I was given his name in religious life when I made my temporary profession in 1997. I have prayed many times at his tomb in the abbey Church that bears his name just north of Paris.
Who was Saint Denis? He was the first bishop of Paris, he was a missionary and he was a martyr. According to the story, after he was beheaded in the place known today as Montmartre, “the hill of the martyr” in Paris, he picked up his head and walked several miles to the location where his tomb is located until this day. In his body, St. Denis expressed this central tenant of our faith
The Word of God is not chained
Denis’ witness to the Gospel could not be stifled, even by death
I am devoted to my patron even though I know next to nothing about him as a man. I do not know his appearance, his origins, or his personality. I know nothing about his particular characteristics as a priest, a bishop. I do know one thing however, and that is enough. I know he was devoted to an ideal, that ideal spoken of in the Second Letter to Timothy, the ideal of the priest, the pastor, indeed, the disciple.
The ideal that the Word of God is not, cannot be chained.
The Christians of the early Church needed to know that. The Jews were for centuries a people for whom God was a veiled God, a God chained to the reality of the Law. And the Gentiles, they too were a chained people, chained to the daily reminder of political enslavement to a distant imperical deity. They needed an ideal to live for and it is preached in the message of Christ
The Word of God is not chained
Brothers and sisters, like our fathers and mothers of old, we need ideals. In our postmodern, post epistemological mélange of intergenerational, globalizational, hyperbolical reality, we need to remind ourselves that there is something that lasts, something unfettered that stands in the midst of life’s many storms
The Word of God is not chained
That ideal shelters us in a time when the deconstruction all around us begins to take its toll, when we begin to believe the lies that people tell us, that our social order tells us, that even our fellow Christians sometimes tell us.
Lies of hate, lies of segregation, lies of false witness
That ideal upholds us as we faint in the heat of ever-pressing fictions about ourselves, our value as persons whether that value is outside in attitudes and beliefs, or within in our secret sin, in cloaked feelings of worthlessness, in pains yet unnamed, perhaps unknown
That ideal liberates us when we feel chained, when we feel unable to overcome our personal demons, our heaviness of spirit, our delusions of grandeur.
We have all been there, are there
We have known alienation
We have known separation
We have known slavery in one form or another but the words to Timothy ring true:
The Word of God is not chained
And we are not chained
We are not bound on journeys alien and alone
We are not wandering the earth like men healed of our existential leprosy without the sense to thank our liberator, our physician.
In Jesus Christ, in his blood, in his sacrifice, in his passion, in his selflessness, in his gift, in his redemption, in his salvation, in his grace, we have been healed and set free.
Caught in the chains of our own desires, our communal self-direction, our personal satans,
He found us, he raised us up, he enkindled new life in us, he brought us to the crest of Calvary and proclaimed to a dying, gasping world from his cruciform throne. Watch. Watch and see true love, true devotion, true sacrifice. It is still possible, probable, palpable
And he gave us this example casting his gaze down from the wood of that cross. IF you want to live, trust in me, cast your cares on me, and watch me become an outcast for you so that you can live with integrity and the dignity of the children of God
In the shadow of the cross the veil tears in two, the chains of repression fall away
The Word of God is not chained
Because this saying is trustworthy
If we have died with him, if we persevere, we shall also reign with him.
So what must we do?
Nothing so heroic as the sacrifice of the Lord, and more heroic
We must give thanks
Thanksgiving is that ideal which augments the sacrifice of Christ and draws us full round into his paschal mystery
Thanksgiving is at the heart of who we are as Christian men and women. It completes us, it acknowledges our healing, it sets us free from the isolation that contaminates our souls like the sores of leprosy
Thanksgiving is the ability to give God the glory, give him the honor, give him the supremacy in our lives and in our world
Thanksgiving is the only way we can authentically authentically be
WE have been healed and we have returned to give him thanks
Sometimes with trudging, grudging step, but we come
We come here to worship him, to acknowledge him as Lord and Giver of Life
We come here to bow down to his majesty, seated in glory on this altar, the glory of the simplicity of the bread and wine.
Bread and wine, no, Body and Blood shining out from this altar, bursting forth from the confines of accident to announce the good news to all:
The Word of God is not chained
How do we give thanks?
By acknowledging the unalterable truth that we are his, even as we stretch out hands in want of his latest gift, his daily gift, the sacrament of this altar.
Yesterday we also celebrated for the first time, the feast of Blessed John Henry Newman.
I know a great deal about Newman as a man. I have read thousands of pages about Newman’s life, thousands more of his writings. I have written, taught and preached about Newman. I know more about Newman than I know about my patron but it is all really superfluous. The fact of Blessed John Henry Newman’s first feast day tells us all we need to know. He was a man of ideals. Newman was, without a doubt one of the greatest minds in the history of the Church. He was a brilliant, philosopher, educator, preacher, historian and theologian. His ideas have forever changed the way we think about our faith. Yet every day of his adult life, he was a pastor of souls. His personal witness affected the lives of millions of converts, seekers and students, including a nervous new Catholic, a fourteen-year old boy who didn’t quite know where his life was going until a kind priest gave him a little book with these words of Newman in it:
How can I give thanks to God for all his gifts to me?
I shall do good. I shall do his work. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth. … I will trust him. Whatever, wherever I am, I cannot be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve him, if perplexity, my perplexity may serve him. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve him. He knows what he is about. He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide the future from me – still he knows what he is about.
The Word of God is not chained
Praise God, neither are we.

Their angels in heaven
always look upon the face of my heavenly Father
When I was a child, I felt alone a lot because I was an only child. Most of the time, I didn’t mind it, being an “only” certainly had its benefits, except at night.
I confess that I was a little afraid of the dark. Being all alone in the unknown frightened me. I would go to bed at night and pull the covers over my head, sometimes crying myself to sleep. My parents were very concerned about this and so, to help remedy the situation, they got her for me, not a sister, but a guardian angel night light. She was about 8 inches tall and she was made of translucent plastic. She sat on the desk in my room and she had a light bulb insider her that gave off a very faint light. She glowed. She glimmered and, most of all, she was there, in the dark, in the unknown. I was no longer alone.
Later I became a very sophisticated theologian. I have the paper to prove it, but I would be a liar if I said that there are not times when I still feel a little afraid of the dark, of being all alone in the unknown. We all do. It doesn’t matter who we are, how old we are, how surrounded we are, how powerful or how rich we are, there is always a little part of ourselves that will remain, should remain children.
There’s no doubt that we boast and brag, that we bluff our way through, that we perhaps even begin to believe our own clever, convincing lies, but the dark comes as surely as an autumn sunset.
We know the reality of the darkness, whether that is our self-confidence, our guilt, our leftover pain of the past, our utter sense of worthlessness, our simply having no one, our loss, our illness. WE KNOW.
But we also know that into the deepening shadows, that angel comes. Angel means messenger and a messenger is only as great as the message. What is the message?
God knows and God cares. God knows all our secrets and our fears. God knows every wrong thing we ever did and every anonymous good. God knows how alone we can feel even in the crowdedness of busy lives. God knows what weighs upon our hearts as we lie in our beds, pulling the covers over our heads. God knows our cowering and cowardice. God knows and God cares and thus, the angel comes.
The angel comes, perhaps not in a blaze of translucent plastic, but
Perhaps in a reassuring hand on our shoulder.
Perhaps in the comforting words of a friend
Perhaps in a listening ear
Perhaps in a random smile on the street.
their angels in heaven
always look upon the face of my heavenly Father
And those messengers show us that caring face, that loving face, that face which speaks truth in the darkness of our lies.
And they challenge us those guardian angels to become what they are, messengers of God’s love to all the children, young and old.
Isn’t that why we are here?