Dear Friends in Christ:
This weekend, we celebrate the beautiful Solemnity of Corpus Christi (The Body of Christ). We are also greatly privileged to have Father David Ramirez offer his first Mass at the 5:30 p.m. Sunday Mass today. It is an extraordinary blessing for our parish to have one of our sons ordained to the priesthood of Jesus Christ. It is a grace and blessing that God has chosen one of our parishioners to be His priest to offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, administer the sacraments, preach the Gospel, and serve His people. As the Letter to the Hebrews states, “one does not take this honor on his own but is called by God!” (Heb 5). We rejoice with David and the Ramirez Family, and we rejoice for the whole Church as we have a new priest. Ad multos annos!
Today’s solemnity and this wonderful occasion illuminates the inseparable connection between the Eucharist and the priesthood. Both are gifts to the Church from Jesus Himself. Yet in God’s divine plan, there is no Eucharist without the priesthood. God calls certain men and sets them apart for Himself, to serve Him in a unique and special way. This special calling does not make the man better or more special than others. It is the calling that is special. The man, any man and every man, remains unworthy in himself of the call and the dignity of the priesthood. Every man who is ordained to the priesthood, like every other person, is a poor sinner in need of God’s mercy, forgiveness and redemption. God does not call the worthy for no one is worthy of such a call. Rather, God calls men and asks them to give themselves totally to Him, so they may follow Him and serve His Church. I have been blessed to know many wonderful and talented men who are priests. They would have been successful in any chosen career or profession. I have also met some priests who honestly left me scratching my head as to what God saw in them. But in every one of them, there was something that God did see and wanted to use for the good of His people.
In my experience and in my own life of being a priest, every priest knows that he is a sinner and unworthy. Every priest is acutely aware of his own limitations, weakness, brokenness and sinfulness. This awareness allows us who are priests to see God working through us. It allows us to be the first, and hopefully, faithful witnesses to the power of God’s merciful love! If God can use me, think of what God can do with you! If God can love me with such a wonderful and abundant love, how much more does God love you!
The Eucharist is the self-giving of Jesus. The priesthood is a self-giving to Jesus. The priest gives himself to God and God uses the priest to give us Jesus in the Sacrament of the Altar. In the Church’s theology, the priest is called an “alter Christus” (another Christ) ‘For although the priest, in himself, is a finite person, he does not offer the Mass in his own person, but in the person of Christ, and he is the same as if he were another Christ, in the representation of Christ, who is the principal one who offers the sacrifice.’ At Mass, the priest does NOT say at the words of consecration, ‘This is Christ’s Body’ or ‘This is the chalice of Jesus’ Blood’. Instead, the priest says, “This is MY Body” and “This is the chalice of MY Blood”. The priest speaks “in persona Christi” (in the person of Christ). It is Jesus’ offering of HIS Body and Blood by means of His ordained priest. At the same time, though in a most subordinate way, in a spiritual sense, the priest, configured to Christ by ordination, joins himself to the Lord and says to God ‘This is my body and blood, this is my life, which I give to You, O Lord, my God and to Your Church’. At every Mass, the priest is blessed by divine grace to offer himself to God and the Church in love.
The priest, in placing himself out of love for God, in the service of God, becomes the instrument of God to feed and tend God’s people. In turn, the priest himself is nourished and renewed. Just as we need the Eucharist, we need priests! We need priests to offer the sacrifice and to feed us with the Bread of Life. Pray for Fr. David and all our newly ordained priests. Pray that they may be faithful, holy, and joyful priests their whole lives! Please pray for all priests, young and old, strong and weak. In your charity, please pray for Fr. Joseph, for Fr. Chuck, and for me. Pray for our seminarians and for more vocations. Pray for the young men from our parish whom God is calling to serve Him as priests, that they may faithfully and courageously answer the call. “The harvest is plenty, but the laborers are few. Beg the Master of the harvest to send our laborers to the field!” (Mt 9:37-38).
In Pace Christi,
Fr. Troy