“The Priest’s Call to Lead the Way for the Church to Model Unity for the World”
Homily for Mass of Ordination of Priests and Transitional Deacon
June 7, 2025; St. Mary’s Cathedral
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Introduction
The occasion of our ordination ceremony today could not be more timely – that is, this particular ordination ceremony of our three brothers to be advanced in Holy Orders. We are on the eve of Pentecost Sunday, popularly nicknamed the “birthday of the Church.” The Church was born to gather all races, nations and languages across the face of the earth into one people of God, and we indeed have that represented here in our three brothers to be ordained and in all of you, their family and friends with them: Mexican, Filippino and Vietnamese – and here in this city of San Francisco, whose early Catholic history was shaped, originally, by missionaries from Spain and then built up largely by immigrants from Ireland and Italy.
Instructions for Evangelization
We can consider this the full blossoming of what began on that first Pentecost, and which we also see in seminal form in the Gospel just proclaimed for this Mass of Ordination: the sending out of the seventy-two disciples to proclaim the Kingdom of God. There is a symbolic, as well as historical, significance to this number, for in Biblical times seventy-two was considered to be the total number of nations in the world.
Our Lord is preparing his disciples here for the work of the Church that would begin when he would send them the Holy Spirit after returning to his Father in glory: to go out to all the world and teach all the nations what he taught them, making them disciples and incorporating them into the people of God. What is most critical, though, is that he gives them – and us – the instructions for how this is accomplished. Let us consider those instructions he gave them.
They are to “[c]arry no money bag, no sack, no sandals”: that is, the proclaimer of the Gospel must be free from clutter in his life, he must be free from the distractions of material things. Hence the instruction to greet no one along the way: far from an order to be rude, it is precisely the injunction for the proclaimer of the Gospel to concentrate on the task to which he has been commissioned, not to linger on things of lesser importance when he has been given charge of those of the greatest importance. Our Lord then further instructs the disciples to stay in the same home once they are received – that is, they are not to go looking for a more comfortable place to stay.
The Instructions Fulfilled
The man of God must never work for the sake of getting something out of it for himself. He lives purely for the glory of God and the salvation of souls, and this must determine all that he does and guide the entire course of his life. This is how the man of God fulfills his call, how he dies to himself in union with Christ, so he can give life to those under his pastoral care and contribute to the full blossoming of the Gospel.
And we don’t have to imagine what this looks like. We see it manifested in the first Christian communities, as described for us in the Acts of the Apostoles. The story we heard in the first reading for our Mass today is the speech Peter gives on the occasion of receiving Cornelius and his entire household into the Church.
Cornelius was a Roman centurion (a high rank among the ordinary soldiers) who was very devout and generous: he prayed throughout the day and donated his own money to the local people. Being Roman, though, he was not part of God’s original Chosen People. God gave visions to both Cornelius and Peter so that the two would meet, and Peter would understand that the fulfillment of God’s plan of salvation in His Son Jesus Christ was for people of all nations, races and languages: “To [Jesus of Nazareth] all the prophets bear witness, that everyone who believes in him will receive forgiveness of sins through his name.” The apostles lived their call to be men of God faithfully, and the Good News of salvation spread all throughout the world.
The Contemporary Context
While this is a perennial truth and so applies in all ages and cultures, each generation nonetheless must discern how to apply it and live it out in the concrete circumstances of their own particular society and the culture that drives it. In a world divided by war and ideological conflict, it means for us today that the Church must be a model of unity for the world. The message of unity is one that Pope Leo is emphasizing repeatedly, as he did recently in his homily at Mass for the ordination of priests. As he put it, we are “a wounded Church, sent to a wounded humanity, within a wounded creation.” And even while not yet being perfected, what is truly necessary, he tells us, is to be credible: by being credible, we rebuild the credibility of the Church. This is the most important thing, for, as Pope Leo says, “we are not yet perfected, but [what] is necessary [is] to be credible.”
In this, priests must lead the way, lead the way in modeling unity and being credible. And this can only come about by the priest being true to his identity which, Pope Leo explains, “depends on his union with Christ, our Eternal High Priest.” He then exhorted the ordinandi at that Mass to follow after the manner of Jesus, telling them: “Being … servants of God … binds us to the earth: not to an ideal world, but to the real one. Like Jesus, those whom the Father puts in your path are people of flesh and blood.” The priest, then, must be a man of integrity. He cannot become a priest in order to acquire status or a comfortable life. A priest who is comfortable is a counter-witness to the Gospel.
The Rite of Ordination contains a sample homily the bishop can use in addressing those to be ordained. And it contains, precisely, a call to integrity to the candidates about to be ordained. It has the bishop exhort them with these words: “Show yourselves without blemish and beyond reproach before God and others, as is proper for the ministers of Christ and the stewards of God’s mysteries. Do not allow yourselves to be turned away from the hope of the Gospel which you must not only hear but also serve. Hold fast to the mystery of faith with a clear conscience.”
The Ordained Minister’s Instructions for Personifying Christ
Only with such integrity can one live with a clear conscience, and thereby manifest credibility, which in turn makes possible the accomplishment of the Church’s mission: to unite all peoples across the face of the earth into one people of God. And this is possible only by living with integrity our common identity in Christ, priests and priestly people. He is the source of our unity, he is our bridge to heaven; unless we look to him and walk down that path, keeping our vision fixed on the world of eternity, we will not unite nations in this world of time and space.
The priest must lead the way by serving as minister of word and sacrament for the priestly people of God. Which is why priests must first pass through the order of deacon before being ordained to the Priesthood. The deacon’s call is one of service: in the liturgy he serves the priest and proclaims the Gospel. The priest is ordained to offer the unbloody sacrifice of Christ on the altar, but even so he never loses that diaconal character. He offers the sacrifice, as we say, standing in persona Christi, “in the person of Christ.” Perhaps it is better to say that his call is to personify Christ, and he most does this by following the instructions Christ gave to those seventy-two disciples whom he sent out to proclaim the Kingdom of God.
The Rites of Ordination of both deacons and priests have an instruction after the laying on of hands which deftly summarizes those instructions from our Lord. For the deacon, the bishop hands him the Book of the Gospels and says: “Believe what you read, teach what you believe, and practice what you teach.” And for the priest, when handing him the pattern and chalice with the bread and wine for the sacrifice of the Mass, the bishop says: “Understand what you will do, imitate what you will celebrate, and conform your life to the mystery of the Lord’s Cross.” To believe, teach and put into practice; to understand, imitate and conform his life to the sacrifice of Christ: this is the high calling of the ordained minister.
Conclusion
We rejoice with our brothers who today are advanced in Holy Orders, and we pray that God will lavish His grace upon them to be faithful to this responsibility to which He has called them and to which they have willingly responded: that they may model for the Church credibility by the integrity of their identity in Christ, and so lead the Church in being a model of unity for the world here on earth and a bridge to the world that is yet to come. Amen.
RESUMEN EN ESPAÑOL
El relato del Evangelio que escuchamos proclamado hoy narra cómo nuestro Señor envió a los setenta y dos discípulos a proclamar el Reino de Dios. Al hacerlo,
nuestro Señor los prepara para la obra evangelizadora que emprenderían cuando les enviara el Espíritu Santo tras regresar a su Padre en gloria. Una lección importante para nosotros son las instrucciones que les da sobre cómo deben proclamar el Reino de Dios.
En primer lugar, no deben llevar «dinero, ni alforja, ni calzado», y también no deben «saludar a nadie por el camino»: es decir, el proclamador del Evangelio debe estar libre de desorden en su vida, libre de las distracciones de las cosas materiales. Debe concentrarse en la tarea que se le ha encomendado, sin detenerse en cosas de menor importancia, ya que se le han confiado las de mayor importancia. Nuestro Señor instruye además a los discípulos a permanecer en la misma casa una vez sean recibidos: el hombre de Dios nunca debe buscar su propia comodidad ni cumplir con sus deberes para obtener algún beneficio. Debe vivir puramente para la gloria de Dios y la salvación de las almas, y esto debe determinar todo lo que hace y guiar el curso entero de su vida. Así es como el hombre de Dios cumple su llamado, es cómo muere a sí mismo en unión con Cristo, para poder dar vida a quienes están bajo su cuidado pastoral y contribuir al florecimiento pleno del Evangelio.
Si bien esta es una verdad perenne y, por lo tanto, aplicable a todas las épocas y culturas, cada generación debe discernir cómo aplicarla y vivirla en las circunstancias concretas de su sociedad particular y la cultura que la impulsa. En un mundo dividido por la guerra y el conflicto ideológico, significa para nosotros hoy que la Iglesia debe ser un modelo de unidad para el mundo. El mensaje de unidad es uno que el Papa León enfatiza repetidamente, como lo hizo recientemente en su homilía para la ordenación de sacerdotes. Como él mismo expresó, somos «una Iglesia herida, enviada a una humanidad herida, dentro de una creación herida». Y aun sin ser todavía perfectos, lo verdaderamente necesario, nos dice, es ser creíbles: siendo creíbles, reconstruimos la credibilidad de la Iglesia. Esto es lo más importante, pues, como dice el Papa León, «aún no somos perfectos, pero [lo] necesario [es] ser creíbles».
En esto, los sacerdotes deben liderar, ser modelos de unidad y ser creíbles. Y esto solo puede lograrse si el sacerdote es fiel a su identidad, la cual, explica el Papa León, «depende de su unión con Cristo, nuestro Sumo y Eterno Sacerdote». Luego exhortó a los ordenandos en esa Misa a seguir el ejemplo de Jesús, diciéndoles: «Ser… siervos de Dios… nos une a la tierra: no a un mundo ideal, sino al mundo real. Como con Jesús, aquellos quienes el Padre les pone en su camino son personas de carne y hueso».
El sacerdote, por tanto, debe ser un hombre íntegro. No puede hacerse sacerdote para adquirir un estatus o una vida cómoda. Un sacerdote que se siente cómodo es un contra testimonio del Evangelio. El sacerdote debe liderar el camino, pero es todo el pueblo de Dios —sacerdotes y pueblo sacerdotal— quien debe vivir con integridad nuestra identidad común en Cristo para que la Iglesia cumpla su misión. Él es la fuente de nuestra unidad, nuestro puente hacia el cielo; solo mirándolo y caminando por ese camino, manteniendo nuestra visión fija en el mundo de la eternidad, podremos unir a las naciones en este mundo de tiempo y espacio.
Como también enseñó el Papa León en aquella homilía de ordenación, juntos en Cristo «unimos cielo y tierra». No puedo, pues, concluir mejor que con las palabras que el Papa León concluyó su homilía en aquella Misa de Ordenación:
«El amor de Cristo nos posee de verdad» … Así, la vida entregada por estos hermanos, que pronto serán ordenados, está llena de significado… Les damos gracias y damos gracias a Dios que los ha llamado a servir a un pueblo enteramente sacerdotal. Juntos, de hecho, unimos el cielo y la tierra. En María, Madre de la Iglesia, resplandece este sacerdocio común que exalta a los humildes, une a las generaciones y nos hace llamarnos bienaventurados (cf. Lc 1,48.52). Que ella, Nuestra Señora de la Confianza y Madre de la Esperanza, interceda por nosotros.