H O M I L Y

CHRISM MASS 2002

“ you will be named ‘priests of the Lord’,

they will call you ‘ ministers of our God’”

( Is. 61. 6 ).

My dear brother Priests, my dear young people, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, these words taken from the first reading in today’s celebration of the Chrism Mass remind us that God chooses from among his people certain persons to minister in His Name. They are chosen, not because of their personal worthiness or their great intellectual abilities, but simply because God wants them to be ministers of His mercy. I am surrounded here today by those very persons whom the Lord has chosen. They are those who are called ‘ priests of the Lord’, ‘ ministers of our God’ and today they gather together to renew with their Bishop their commitment to their priestly ministry.

This Week, which we call Holy Week, sees the unfolding of the mystery of God’s Mercy in a unique way through the Passion, Death and Resurrection of His Son, Jesus. This Week we, as Church, re-enact the great moments of those Three Days – the Institution of Christ’s Eucharistic Sacrifice and of His Real Presence in the Blessed Eucharist; the Institution of the ministerial Priesthood through which God’s mysterious and merciful action in the world is perpetuated; the Way of the Cross and the Calvary event of Redemption; the silence of the Tomb giving way to the joyful resurrection of the first Easter morning. What a week this is!

Truly a Holy Week and the three days, starting on Holy Thursday and ending on Easter Sunday, are at the very heart of the Church’s liturgical life. They enable all the People of God to walk the redemptive journey of Christ in faith to the Upper Room, through the Hill of Calvary to the empty Tomb and to rejoice in the Risen Lord singing their Easter Alleluia. Spread over these special three days, called the Sacred Triduum, one Liturgical Act takes place, the Act of Redemption effected for us by Jesus Christ. I invite you all, my dear People, to allow yourselves to be captured by the extraordinary love of Christ manifested in these days and to be renewed by the New Life He has won for us by His Death and Resurrection.

Today’s celebration is better known as the ‘Chrism Mass’ because during it the oils, used in the conferring of the Sacraments of the Church, are blessed and consecrated. The three oils used by the Priests in their ministry of the Sacraments are: the Oil of Catechumens, the Oil of the Sick and the Oil of Chrism. You young people, who have just been recently Confirmed, remember how I anointed you with the Oil of Chrism and how, through the Sacrament of Confirmation, you received the Gifts of the Spirit so that, through you, God might continue His work of salvation in the world. Today you will witness the special consecration of the Oil of Chrism which will be used in this Diocese. As we bless the Oils today, remember that it is being done in the Name of Jesus Christ from whom Chrism takes its name.

The blessing and consecration of these Oils are linked to what we call the Divine Economy of God’s Grace, that is the manner by which God, through the Sacraments of the Church, dispenses the mercy and grace won for us by His Son, Jesus, through His Passion, Death and Resurrection. “ The Eucharist, the summit of the sacramental economy, is also its source: all the Sacraments, in a sense, spring from the Eucharist and lead back to It. This is true, in a special way, of the Sacrament charged with ‘mediating’ the forgiveness of God, who welcomes the repentant sinner back into His embrace”( Pope’s Letter to Priests for Holy Thursday 2002. Par. 2). Jesus came to encounter the sinner, to call the sinner to a personal encounter with Him in such a way as to give the sinner the opportunity to live again in Grace. All the Priests here today – indeed all Priests – have been charged by Christ to be ‘ faithful ministers of the mysteries of God’ and it is precisely because of their calling that the Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, has addressed a special Letter to them – which they will receive today – a letter in which he stresses their role in dispensing the mystery of God’s loving Mercy in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. The Holy Father writes: “ My dear Brothers in the Priesthood: in recalling this truth, I feel a pressing need to urge you, as I did last year, to rediscover for yourselves and to help others to rediscover the beauty of the Sacrament of Reconciliation”(ibid. par.3). He stresses the need for the penitent to have personal contact with an all-loving, all-merciful God and he says that the Sacrament of Reconciliation “ does so by bringing the penitent into contact with the merciful heart of God through the friendly face of a brother”(ibid.par.3). He urges Priests in these words: “ With joy and trust let us rediscover this Sacrament. Let us experience it above all for ourselves, as a deeply felt need and as a grace which we constantly look for, in order to restore vigour and enthusiasm to our journey of holiness and to our ministry…. Let us make every effort to be true ministers of mercy….This is a great responsibility – God counts on us, on our availability and fidelity, in order to work his wonders in human hearts”(ibid. par 4).

The Holy Father, in order to highlight the significance of the personal contact, uses what he calls the ‘biblical icon’ of the meeting between Jesus and Zacchaeus. You, young people, know well the story of Zacchaeus, of the ‘chance’ meeting he had with Jesus from the top of a tree. Really it wasn’t a chance meeting at all. It was all in God’s plan. The Holy Father explains: “ Everything that happens to him (Zacchaeus) is amazing. If there had not been, at a certain point, the ‘surprise’ of Christ looking up at him, perhaps he would have remained a silent spectator of the Lord moving through the streets of Jericho. Jesus would have passed by, not into, his life. Zacchaeus had no idea that the curiosity which had prompted him to do such an unusual thing was already the fruit of a mercy which had preceded him, attracted him and was about to change him in the depths of his heart”(ibid. par. 5). Encouraging us Priests to re-read the account of the encounter of Jesus with Zacchaeus in St. Luke’s Gospel, the Holy Father says: “Every encounter with someone wanting to go to confession, even when the request is somewhat superficial because it is poorly motivated and prepared, can become, through the surprising grace of God, that ‘place’ near the sycamore tree where Christ looked up at Zacchaeus” (ibid. par. 5). Jesus calls Zacchaeus by name and announces to him that He ‘ must stay at your house today’ (Lk.19: 5). Before his encounter with Jesus in his own home the Mercy of God has already entered into the life of Zacchaeus and so he is disposed to receive a visit from the One who saves. "“This is what happens in every sacramental encounter. We must not think”, writes the Holy Father, “ that it is the sinner, through his independent journey of conversion, who earns mercy. On the contrary, it is mercy that impels him along the path of conversion” (ibid. par. 6).

Pope John Paul speaks very directly to us Priests when writes: “ In confession, therefore, we can find ourselves faced with all kinds of people. But of one thing we must be convinced: anticipating our invitation, and even before we speak the words of the Sacrament, the brothers and sisters who seek our ministry have already been touched by a mercy that works from within. Please God, we shall know how to cooperate with the mercy that welcomes and the love that saves” (ibid. par. 6). This insistence by the Holy Father on the ‘personal encounter’ with Jesus, this receiving Jesus into our own home in a sense, underlines the dynamic of the personal, private confession and the healing effect of being touched by the mercy of God. We Priests must never lose our appreciation for and understanding of how God wishes to relate to each individual soul. We penitents must never forget that we are called by name to a personal encounter with a loving Saviour. The Holy Father makes a point which is most touching:

“ In the Sacrament, the penitent first meets not ‘ the commandments of God’ but, in Jesus, ‘ the God of the commandments’ (ibid. par. 7).

As we conclude this penitential period of Lent, a period given to each one of us, Priests and People alike, to have our ‘ personal encounter’ with the ‘ God of the commandments’ may we rejoice in having been called to that new life won for us on the Cross and brought to fruition by the Resurrection of the Lord. May we Priests never fail to marvel at the miracles of grace which are worked in the human soul by a God who loves, by a God who saves, by a God who says: “ Go in peace and sin no more”. We have been named ‘ priests of the Lord’, we have been called ‘ ministers of our God’ may we now renew our commitment to that calling which we received on our Ordination day so that, through our Ministry,

“ the faithful (may) have an intense experience of the face of Christ the Good Shepherd” (ibid. par. 4 ).

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