And my older sister sent me this
caricature
Of this overblown fellow, quite
full of himself, saying:
“We haven’t much time, so
I’ll just tell you about me!”
In a way I feel sorry for Grand
Rapids.
I was here 26 years ago, for 8
months or so as a deacon,
Not long enough to get to know me
very well,
And at the end of that time The
CIC sent me off
With a big party
to be ordained
hoping, I suppose, for the best.
Twenty-five years later I return,
And after 8 months or so
Not long enough to get to know me
very well,
You give me another celebration
for the years I have spent as a
priest;
and you only have my word for it
that there is anything to
celebrate.
It appears the CIC is willing to
throw a party for anyone
With only the flimsiest of
evidence.
No wonder we Paulists like it
here.
I want to report to you
what I have learned about the
priesthood of God’s people over my 25 years.
As you came in you were handed
the homily
From the ordination rite given by
the ordaining prelate
For me and my 5 classmates,
it was Cardinal Cooke of New
York.
It is the best, most concise
statement
Of the priesthood I know.
It starts by saying that we
All the baptized, share in the
priesthood of Jesus Christ,
And that Jesus Christ is active
among us
Every day, Right now, Making us
his body
Helping us become a people of God
A temple- a place where people
can find God.
Priests like me, are first and
foremost people
Who in concert with the bishop
Announce
Point out
Celebrate
The Good News that
Jesus is present
Jesus is working
In all of us all the time.
“Meditate on the law of God”
the Cardinal told us,
“Believe what you read, teach
what you believe
practice what you teach.”
One of the most powerful
meditations
on Jesus active and alive in our
midst,
I received here-at the party for
my first mass
which was also my going away
party.
It is actually the story of a 13
year old boy I first saw
Eight months previous
Hanging around the back of the
Church on Sunday evening
Looking as uncomfortable as most
teenagers do at Mass,
But, with an additional sadness.
The parents he loved, who loved
him,
no longer loved each other.
The Sunday evening mass at the
CIC was the neutral zone
The place where he could be
dropped off
Exchanged, between visitations
With one parent or the other.
In the summer: with sand covered
sandals
In the winter, wearing cross
country ski boots
He would stand in the back, and
we would talk
About swimming, fishing, skiing,
football
School if need be, anything
To take his mind off the upcoming
handoff,
And, to suggest, that God was a
constant in his life.
Back to the going away party 25
years ago,
This same kid showed up, by
himself
In dress shoes, white shirt and a
blue blazer.
He waited, waited and waited
Obviously waiting until everyone
else had gone.
Then he gave me a big box and
said,
“So now you are a priest,
right?”
“Right.” I said.
“And so you can never get
married?”
“Nope.”
“That’s what I thought” he
said, “so I got you this.”
And inside the box was this,
large soft teddy bear.
I now understood
why he wanted to give me this why
nobody was looking
It is an unusual gift for a 13
year old male to give.
He explained it to me:
“If you can’t ever get
married I figured you needed something soft to sleep with at night.”
After I left for Boston, we
exchanged a few brief letters
About school, sports, etc, until
two years later
I received a letter from his
mother
Explaining to me that he had
drowned
in a swimming accident at a
party.
He had kept in a box, our letters
and a snapshot taken of the two
of us
at my going away party. She
thought I would want to know,
she thought he would want me to
have the picture.
I still have the picture, but
that, and his name
I will keep private to myself.
As you see, I still have the bear
And no, I won’t tell you if I
sleep with it at night.
But what I will tell you is this:
In my first month as a priest
A 13 year old boy from Grand
Rapids
Taught me that Jesus was working
in everyone all the time.
I would be taught that lesson
over and over again
For at least half of my
priesthood has been spent outside of church settings, working with young people:
Many of them homeless,
Runaways who felt less abused on
the street
than they did at home.
Women and men both surviving for
a time
And then dying
In the sex industry and drug
trade.
I have worked with many young
people suffering
From mental illness so serious
they needed the hospital.
Depressed, anxious, manic,
suicidal, homicidal, psychotic,
conflicted over sexual
orientation,
living with the pain of
unspeakable frequent abuse
all suffering the additional
social stigma that society
lays on the backs of people with
these afflictions
as if they were at fault for
their own misfortune.
In these young, no longer
innocent lives
Wracked with pain I have seen
these teenagers
Struggle to love and be loved
To be a friend and to have
friends;
I have seen them take the last
thing they had
The last vestige of their dignity
and
freely give it to another.
Their lives, sermons of self
sacrifice
Illustrations that even in the
least among us
Jesus is present, working
everywhere, all the time.
Not all of them made it, some did
not,
Many had wounds beyond my
capacity to heal.
I am grateful to them, and to
their parents
For trusting me enough to have
the chance to know them.
I have also had the opportunity
to work with young adults
On the other end of the spectrum
At universities in Boston,
Connecticut, Indiana and Ohio.
They were some of the best
athletes in the world,
Some the most promising and
talented artists
of their generation;
some of them, possessing
incredibly brilliant scientific minds,
all of them regardless of
discipline
at some point in their very
fortunate lives
came across the scripture:
“To whom much is given, much is
expected.”
Then they wrestled with the
question, Why me?
Why had God given them
their particular talents and
opportunities?
What did it mean?
What should they do with it?
Who and what should they live
for?
Who and what should they die for?
I mention both groups of young
people
Because in the Cardinal’s
homily you will read:
“your ministry will perfect the
spiritual sacrifice
of the faithful, by uniting it to
Christ’s sacrifice,
the sacrifice which is offered
sacramentally
through your hands.”
My 25 years of priesthood have
taught me that both
Those who need and those who have
Are offering their lives in
sacrifice;
They sacrifice their lives in and
for love;
Sometimes effectively, joyfully;
Often with mistakes,
Sometimes selfishly
And sometimes with a love that is
unrequited.
But when we gather here at this
altar,
The Church that gathers here
The people who gather here
You and me
We bear in our bodies the
sufferings of Christ,
The sufferings of people who
struggle to love as he loves.
The ministry of the priest is to
make clear
That this is what we offer to God
Christ’s sacrifice still going
on in us.
The ministry of the priest is to
make clear
That the gift given is the gift
God returns to us
The Body of Christ, broken in
love, for us.
Your lives and the life of Christ
is what makes
The priesthood a privilege.
Now we come to that part of the
Ordination homily that is
somewhat problematic.
The Cardinal says,
“Know what you are doing
and imitate the mystery you
celebrate.”
Not only is that a tall order, it
gets worse
For when the Cardinal placed in
my hands the chalice and paten for the first time he said:
“Receive the gifts of the
people of God,
be as holy as the actions you
celebrate.”
Imitate the mystery of the
Lord’s death and resurrection
Be as holy as the actions you
celebrate…
Attend to the concerns of Christ
before your own..
After 25 years I had hoped
I would have gotten better at
that, but you know
You get busy.
I am grateful though that I have
lived for over 30 years
With Paulist Fathers who have
done exactly that:
Men who teach what they believe
and practice what they teach;
Men who pattern their life after
the mystery of the cross;
Men who are as holy as the
actions they perform.
I hope you can appreciate it can
be a bit discouraging
When Chuck and I sit around the
breakfast table
with Joe Gallagher and John Kenny
and realize that no matter how
hard you work that day
no matter how many people you
raise from the dead
the best you can do compared to
Joe and John
is tie for third.
My Paulist brothers, all of them
Have not only given me a way to
be a priest,
They have given me a way to
believe in Christ.
I am grateful to all of them.
I am grateful, once again to be
here at the CIC
At a place where all of you, for
over 55 years
Have lived out the final sentence
in the Cardinal’s homily:
“Always remember the example of
the Good Shepard who cam not to be served but to serve,
and to seek out and save what was
lost.”
Your lives are inspiring to me
and I am humbled and grateful to
be with you again.
In closing, let me let you in on
a secret Paulist tradition.
In the time when we ordained
priests every year
The night before was reserved for
a big Paulist party
Kind of a clerical stag party;
Ostensibly to honor those to be
ordained
But more so as a celebration of
all of us.
All the anniversaries were
honored:
The golden jubilarians whose 50
years of service
made them both first and frail;
the silver jubilarians, whose 25
years of wisdom
they were all too ready to bestow
on the gathered crowd
and then finally the
whippersnappers,
the rookies, the ordinandi, as we
were called.
After participating in this
event,
My classmates and I developed a
saying:
“For the first five years, you
were the new priest;
For the first 15 years, you would
be the young priest;
after 25 years, you would be just
an old priest.”
I woke up this morning, looked in
the mirror
And discovered that we were
right.
But what I know now, that I did
not know then,
Is that after 25 years,
To be just a priest,
Even an old priest,
Is enough for me.
Amen.