Download Homily at the Maynooth Union Mass Maynooth, 29 May 2012 In the

Homily at the Maynooth Union Mass
Maynooth, 29 May 2012
In the Summer of 1986, those of us now in the Silver Jubilee Class had just
been ordained deacons, and some of us were despatched to London for pastoral
experience.
Our fates differed. I, for instance, was sent to a parish where my biggest
challenge was to turn up each day at 12.45pm when the PP would mix Gin and
Tonics and the Filipino housekeeper would serve prunes wrapped in rashers on
cocktails sticks before ringing the bell for a long and liquid lunch. The extent of
my being tested was bringing communion to a housebound parishioner who
lived in a small apartment with fifteen putrid cats and preaching once a week at
the Novena.
Meanwhile, some of my classmates were busily climbing the high-rise flats in
places such as Notting Hill, knocking on doors and getting a mixed response to
the question: “are you a practising Catholic?”
In retrospect, this was our first experience of the fact that pastoral assignments
could be rather arbitrary!
However, I had one life-altering experience while in London. A native of the
parish was ordained to the priesthood and I was invited to the ceremony. The
ordaining bishop was Cardinal Basil Hume. During my time in the seminary I
had found his spiritual writings very helpful, but nothing prepared me for the
impact that his homily had at that ordination. His words were beautiful because
of their profundity, and simplicity. He said: “a priest must love his people”.
That was it. Not just serve, care for or administer to, but love them.
We know well how the word and even the concept of ‘love’ has become
debased in contemporary culture. Indeed, it has been a significant part of Pope
Benedict’s ministry, especially through his encyclicals, to restore us to a real
and living understanding of what genuine love is. Pope Benedict has also
stressed that love is essentially what priestly ministry is about. In his Opening
Address for the Year of Priests he quoted the Cure d’Ars who said “the
priesthood is the love of the heart of Jesus”.
In ordination we accepted and received the grace to administer the sacraments
as encounters with God’s love. As priests, our lives have no daily fire unless
they are rooted in God’s love in Christ, nourished by this love and this alone,
and radiate the joy of this love to others.
The more loving we are, the more fully human we are, and the more our
humanity renders present the life and love of Christ. Personal conversion, for
us, which is always a work in progress, means making the love of God and of
others not even second nature to us, but our first nature, our very raison d’etre.
All this sounds good but when I look back over the twenty-five years of my
priesthood, I wonder if, in all honesty, I have been more in love with the idea of
Christianity, than with Christ himself. I am, I think, very committed to
Christianity as a system of beliefs. I delight in its sheer logic; I believe
passionately that Christian faith dovetails perfectly with genuine human efforts
to find ultimate meaning.
However, loving a tradition of ideas is not the same as loving a person.
Admiring and defending the reasonableness of Christianity as a system of
beliefs is not the same as entering into the riskiness, messiness and vulnerability
of relationship with God in Christ. Avoiding the risk such a relationship
involves also means missing out on the joy and fulfillment it, and it alone,
promises.
Similarly, we can get absorbed in the business of administering Christian faith.
We can manage things with great efficiency, and take pride in our achievements
about how well we run our parishes, schools and dioceses.
But we can do all these things and still be only in love with the idea of Christian
faith, and pleased with ourselves as efficient administrators of it.
When power and authority are not rooted in love there is always the danger of
abuse. It is chilling to reflect upon the fact that some of the priests, who
committed the most horrific crimes of sexual abuse, were considered to have
functioned well in their parishes and communities until they were caught.
It is also chilling to consider how convicted priests who have repented say that
although they had been ministering for years, their lives had been constructed
around a hollow shell. Tragically, it was only when they were confronted by the
full horror of their actions and sought forgiveness that they came to know and
accept the love of Christ personally. They eventually found healing grace, but
only through embracing their vulnerability.
The Liturgy of the Word today confronts us with what it means to be in
discipleship. To follow Jesus is to put out trust in nothing but the grace of Christ
(1 Peter 1: 10–16). It means to be in an exclusive loving relationship with him:
“We have left everything and followed you”, Peter tells Jesus (Mark 10: 28-
31). Even love of others, “brothers, sisters, father, children” is to be for God’s
sake and to flow from the love of God in Christ.
Discipleship is about becoming holy, which means becoming somewhat like
God: “Be holy, for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:16). Holiness is nothing other than the
state in which we are wholly consumed by God’s love, a state essential for
priests whose task is to sanctify.
A personal, prayerfully loving relationship with Christ is essential to our lives
as priests and today, as we celebrate the anniversary of our ordination, is a good
day to renew our commitment to this as the defining relationship in our lives.
In this Eucharist, we have much for which to give thanks.
First of all we give thanks for the past. We give thanks especially to God for
God’s fidelity toward us, for God’s love in Christ that first delighted in us,
called us to serve, enabled us respond and to persist to this day.
We give thanks for the many moments of joy when God’s Word, through our
ministry, took flesh in the hearts and lives of those we have served .
We give thanks for the people in our lives, living and dead, family, friends and
parishioners, who have supported our own faltering fidelity by radiating God’s
love to us.
We commend to God the lives of our deceased classmates, and we ask God’s
blessing on those who, for whatever reason, are no longer active in priestly
ministry.
And we look to the future. Today’s Gospel account is followed in Mark by a
prophecy of the passion. As Mark testifies, the future for Jesus meant mocking,
spitting, scourging and death, and his message is that the disciple can anticipate
nothing less. We do not know exactly what the future holds for us. All we can
do is practise our disposition of trust and persist, as best we can, in growing in
holiness, taking comfort from the lines in Newman’s Lead kindly light: “so long
thy power hath blessed me, sure it still will lead me on”.
In Mark’s Gospel, Peter seeks reassurance from Jesus that their sacrifice will be
rewarded. “But what about us”, he asks (Mark 10:28). In John’s Gospel
(21:15ff), in contrast, it is Jesus who seeks reassurance from Peter: “Simon, Son
of John, do you love me more than these others”. In fact, Jesus asks Peter three
times.
So on this our anniversary day, perhaps it is appropriate to give and to seek
assurances. We join with Peter, in asking, “But what about us?” And we trust in
the Lord’s response that it will all be worthwhile; that some reward will be ours.
At the same time, perhaps the Lord would welcome from us a gesture of
reassurance that we love him.
We conclude then, by quoting from a homily by Basil Hume on a similar
occasion to this, the renewal of vows in his Benedictine monastery:
“The question is put to you and to me: ‘Do you love me?’ and our reply is: ‘You
know all things, Lord, you know that I love you.’ Give the reassurance in spite
of yourselves, whatever your troubles, your aspirations, your differences, your
failings: they are of little account in comparison to that vocation to love, which
is the Christian call. In renewing your [ordination promises] give that
reassurance to God that you want to return love first given to us. When all is
said and done, this is the one thing that matters” (Basil Hume, Searching for
God, 84).
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Eamonn Conway, Maynooth, 29 May 2012