Chrism Mass
Monday, April 5, 2004
Dear Friends,
Thank you for being here this evening - from all over our diocese and for joining us on this Chrism Mass day to honor our priests and to celebrate the gift and sacrament of priesthood. As in the past, my brother priests have been here most of the day for an afternoon which has come to be known as a day of priestly sanctification. A few hours ago we all enjoyed a wonderful meal together at the Family Center and now we gather around the Eucharistic table and in your presence to renew our vows of priestly commitment. In the name of our priests I thank you for your on-going love and support, while asking you for continued encouragement in our individual and personal efforts at living out our priestly vocation.
Today, Father Bill Welch, a priest of the Arizona part of our diocese, Dean of Lower Arizona and Pastor of Our Lady of the Snows in Snowflake facilitated our day of prayer and reflection. Those of you who know him know how wonderful a speaker and preacher he is.
During his last presentation, (it was part of our penance service), Father Bill shared the real story of seventeen Trappist Monks who, a year ago this Easter, celebrated the first anniversary of their return to the devastated City of Novy Dvur in the Czech Republic to establish a monastery there after decades of official atheism under the rule of Communism.
He described the struggle of the monks at finding the means to establish, rebuild and maintain their new monastery. They were wanting for so much. But more importantly, he described for us how the monks through their life of prayer hoped to bring a spirit of peace and reconciliation to a region of Eastern Europe so long isolated from the life and love of God. He explained how the monks are doing exactly what we are called to do as witnesses of the Lord’s resurrection: to bring God’s light into the darkest of places, to reveal God’s hope in the midst of the greatest despair, to establish God’s peace in the wake of the most turbulent of conflicts, to bring the good news of the empty tomb into our homes and communities.
In this context, allow me to briefly address my brother priests. Not unlike the monks at the center of prayer built in Eastern Europe, we as priests need to be those who can help our parishes to be, in the words of John Paul II, “schools of prayer.” More than ever before the priest needs to be the minister who’s engagement in the life of the local community helps to signal the sacred character of the time and the space in which we all live and work together.
I know that we often recoil from descriptions of ourselves as set aside to mediate the relationship of sacred and secular, fearing reversion to special charisms of privilege and wanting to avoid the situation in which the grace of charism devolves into the entitlements of clericalism. However, if we as priests are to be different without reverting to differences of status and privilege, it will be because we will foster a priesthood whose theology and spirituality, whose sense of shared priesthood with the people, and shared ministry with the women and men in parish ministry will enable us as priests to help people be aware of the presence of Jesus in sacrament and their community, in family and work.
As important as it is to enable priests to be effective pastors - pastoral leaders serving with the women and men in parish ministry - and to be united in a presbyterate with their bishops and fellow priests - more than ever before, the Church needs the priest to be the minister of the sacred, not an employee of the organization!
What a challenge! And that is why we are here this evening. In a few moments these men seated here with you will renew their dedication to Christ as priests of the New Covenant. Pray for them that they may be strengthened in their commitment to the Lord and to you, His Church and that through the gift of the Anointed One, they may be for you a living sign, a warm, human sign of God’s compassionate and redemptive love.