Opening Homily

We begin our formation year with a full house, 142 seminarians. Thanks be to God.

You duped me Lord and I let myself be duped.
The words of the prophet Jeremiah may well resound among some of us here today, those of us who are new and those who have returned.
You duped me Lord and I let myself be duped.
The claims of Jeremiah in the first reading however, offer us something greater than the opportunity to reflect upon our present condition, they offer us the opportunity to examine the vocation of the prophet in the history of salvation. Like the apostles of the new covenant, the prophets were a curious lot. Some, like the prophet Jonah were reluctant men. Jonah when asked by God to go to Nineveh, avoided it like the plague. Elijah was a fiery preacher and outspoken critic of the culture of his time. Isaiah was a poet. Amos was a dresser of sycamore trees. Hosea made a bad marriage. And Jeremiah was a young man, a hesitant man but a man like the others (and like the apostles later on) who could not resist the call of God. He was imbibed with the prophetic spirit, the spirit of witness to the ultimate reality of the Divine over the ephemeral, the passing notions of human happiness, power, authority, prestige and accomplishment. He and the others were gifted with the prophetic spirit and so they went forth to do mighty deeds and proclaim powerful messages in the name of the Most High.
You duped me Lord and I let myself be duped.
There are some in the Church today that claim that the prophetic spirit has departed from the Church. These critics would say that the forceful message of God has been stifled by institutional bureaucracy, by outmoded forms of leadership or by a simple inability to proclaim the Word of Truth effectively to a new generation. For many in the Church today, things are not what they used to be, whether our vision of a prophetic Golden Age existed 50 or 500 years ago. These harbingers of doom lament the lack of prophetic voices in the Church, but I say let us not be duped my brothers and sisters by their fearful warnings.
Brothers and sisters, to these naysayers, I say. As long as Church walls stand in places like Pakistan and Syria, Church walls bombarded with messages of hate yet boldly continuing to proclaim the Prince of Peace amid the clamor of the gross machinery of ideological warfare, I say the prophetic spirit lives in the Church.
I say the spirit of prophecy lives as long as bells ring out over distant hills to proclaim times of prayer and consecration in a world of violence, violence in the home, in the fields, in the human heart, and in a world of blasphemy, blasphemy of creation, blasphemy against innocent life, blasphemy against God himself.
I say the spirit of prophecy lives as long as altars are approached and the manifestation of the Living God is present to us, as long as men and women and children bring forward the gifts of their lives to be transubstantiated into Divine reality and take from those same altars the Good News of salvation in the clever disguise of bread and wine.
I say the spirit of prophecy lives as long as candles are lit to quell the encroaching darkness of the human spirit inebriated with false understandings of choice, debilitating lies about freedom.
The spirit of prophecy lives as long as masses are celebrated in distant churches, while outside the hounds of intolerance bay for the blood of Christians.
The spirit of prophecy lives as little children continue to be brought forward to be baptized and men and women find their way to the safe harbor of the Church in Easter vigils from year to year
The spirit of prophecy lives as long as knees are bent in humble confession and tears are shed as sins long held fast are forgiven and the assurances of absolution given
The spirit of prophecy lives as long as one couple enters into the sanctity of marriage with the full conviction of their vocations to be witnesses of Christ’s love for the world.
The spirit of prophecy lives as long as women and men kneel in sanctuaries to take vows of apostolic service and pour out their lives for the good of others
Brothers and sisters the spirit of prophecy, the spirit of evangelization, the spirit instilled so irresistibly in those varied men of old continues in our day, it cannot help but continue
The spirit of prophecy in every utterance of Church teaching that points to a better way of life for the hungry huddled masses starving in the streets of the cities of so called developed countries
The spirit of prophecy that speaks liberation to families immured in lives of rank poverty, the slavery of unutterable violence, and the shroud of desperation
The spirit of prophecy that boldly proclaims life in a culture of death, the dignity of every man, every woman every child from conception until the last labored breath is drawn
The spirit of prophecy in far flung places like Korea, Africa, Mexico, India, and throughout the United States where men continue to stand up to be counted with the saints and hearing the call of God, the call heard by the prophets of Old, respond with heartfelt voices, clear voices, unwavering voices: Speak Lord, your servant is listening
It is the spirit of prophecy that infuses us to be mighty proclaimers of the Word
That Word whose quickening syllables arouse us from the slumber of indifference, impatience, and spiritual sloth
That Word that desperate ears long to hear, that dispels the fearsome phantoms of death and proclaims life eternal for a people sheltering against the walls of a lost Eden
That Word that compels us to proclamation, instills in our hearts the wonder of the Incarnate Deity
That Word that invades our bones, the very marrow of our bones, and sets us ablaze until it and we become like fire.
Fire that cannot be quenched
And O brothers and sisters we need a fire
We need a fire to burn in the depths of our souls and consume our complacency and our lack of faith
We need a fire of illumination to take to a world hovering in the shadows of its own lies
We need a fire to warm the depths of the human intellect and culture long neglected by the enduring chill of indifference.
And the Word of God, the spirit of prophecy is that fire that consumes the critical spirit of this age, clearing barren trees from the landscapes of cynicism and destruction until we can see the clear horizon of Truth over which the Mighty Son of Justice rises with healing in his wings and whose thunderous voice cries out that God is not dead nor does he sleep and continues to instill the spirit of prophecy in his Church, in her preachers, in us
We are called my brothers and sisters to take this message, this wondrous word to those who need it
To be bearers of his love for those who are lost and forsaken
To be witnesses of his affection for the lonely and afraid
To bear within ourselves the power of his promise
Brothers and sisters, today let us resolve to take up the mantle of prophecy.
Dare to be faithful to God’s call which is unique in each of us
Dare to be faithful to the Holy Church, to the College of Bishops, to our superiors, to the program of formation in this seminary
Dare to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice of service in the celibate way of life with the full conviction that the Lord will take care of all your needs
Dare to move that service away from attention to the self and toward the needs of others
Dare to hear the cries of help, sometimes secret, sometimes hidden, in the lives of your brothers and sisters here.
Dare to reject the spirit of the age, the spirit of individualism, the spirit of cynicism and the spirit of death
Dare to study and be transformed renewing your mind in the spirit of prophetic utterance through the authentic teaching office of the Church
Dare to pray, dare to open your heart to the pleading Christ, the beckoning Christ, the consoling Christ
Give your lives to him and hold nothing back and then we will know Brothers and sisters, without a doubt we will know that the prophetic spirit has not left the Church, nor could it leave as long as we long to be true to the Spirit of the Gospel, the living spirit of Christ.
It will not depart as long as one witness cries out from the street corners of overrun cities
As long as one heart continues to beat on behalf of Love Himself
As long as one holy but failing priest opens the covers of breviary hard pressed by years and with his faltering hands makes the sign of the cross and with trembling voice utters the familiar words: God come to my assistance. Lord make haste to help me.
You brothers and sisters have come here, you have come back here, we continue to stay here to be the very life of that prophetic spirit alive in heroic and little ways even as we say:
You have duped us, O Lord, and praise God, we have let ourselves be duped.