Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Thirty Years and Thirty Hours



Thirty years ago I knelt before Bishop Flanagan and he laid his hands on my head and made me a Priest of Jesus Christ. Thirty hours ago, Father Nicholas Desimone, who concelebrates this morning’s Mass, knelt before Bishop McManus, who laid his hands on his head and ordained him to that same Priesthood.


I am honored by your presence, Father Desimone, for you are a sacrament for us...you remind us of Christ’s presence and action in his Church in every age, in every place...And you remind me of me, just thirty short years ago. Little did I suspect what God had in store for me. And here I stand, surrounded by as many memories as you have dreams...


....of Christ healing sinners and drying tears, of Christ offering his perfect sacrifice through your hands, of Christ proclaiming his good news through your lips, of Christ Baptizing into his death and resurrection, of Christ burying the dead...


And all through our hands. Simple, human hands, still moist (in your case) with Holy Chrism. It is a wonder, a miracle, and a perfect joy.


Accipe

Yesterday, following his ordination by the laying on of hands and the Prayer of Ordination, Father Desimone was vested, anointed, and finally knelt before the bishop, who, for the first time, handed him a chalice filled with wine mixed with water and a paten with the bread for the Eucharist. As he received these gifts, the Bishop said to him:


Accept from the holy people of God the gifts to be offered to him.

Know what you are doing, and imitate the mystery you celebrate:

model your life on the mystery of the Lord's cross.


Notice that as these ancient words were spoken, it is the gifts of the holy people of God, your gifts, that were placed into Father’s hands. For in a just a few minutes, a few of you will bring forward gifts of bread and wine for the celebration of the Eucharist. Mixed in with those pieces of bread are the sacrifices of your lives. And with the wine in that cruet are mixed the joys and sorrows, the longings and holy desires of each member of this gathered assembly. At this presentation you are like the Magi bringing gifts to the Christ child. But your gifts are of an even greater value than gold, frankincense and myrrh, for these are the gift of our very lives. For “your prayers, and your faith, and your blood, [are mixed]with His in the chalice. These, like the water and wine, form the matter of his sacrifice.”


The Priest receives those gifts in the person of Christ. He places them upon the altar in the same way that Christ placed his body upon the altar of the cross in a perfect sacrifice of praise. And these gifts are transformed by the great Eucharistic prayer into the very Body and Blood of Christ, and then returned to us as our nourishment that we might have the strength to continue to join ourselves with Christ’s sacrifice every day of our lives.


That is why the Bishop first tells the Priest to know what you are doing: to know that you take into your hands the sacrifices, the souls, and the very lives of the people of God to be joined to his perfect sacrifice of Praise and to be transformed into his own Body and Blood. He carries them in their victories and in their defeats, in their joys and in their sorrows, in their strength an in their brokenness. He kneels down and begs God’s mercy on them with his whole heart and soul.


Two years ago, Bishop McManus called me to serve this good Cathedral Church and the seminarians of Saint John’s; A dozen or so years before that, Bishop Reilly sent me to Washington to serve the Bishops’ Conference; Five years before that Bishop Harrington made me pastor of the newly formed parish in Spencer, before which, on the tenth anniversary of my ordination, he had sent me back to school.


Before that I had been sent by Bishop Flanagan to Saint Leo’s in Leominster, and before that to my first parish, Sacred Heart in Webster, and even before that, to my first temporary assignment in West Boylston, where the beloved Father John Burke, once of this great Church, was recuperating.


Father Desimone has just been sent by Bishop McManus to one of the new parishes in Fitchburg and then he will return to studies in ecclesiology at the Greg. Only God knows the wonders which will await him in the years to come. But one thing is certain. God has called us both to a great adventure, filled with more joy and peace than a human heart can contain. And each day for the past three decades, God has looked on this lowly servant and shown a mercy of which I am totally undeserving. And all I pray is that for the next thirty or sixty years, Nick, God does the same for you.


When I think of this Priesthood which we share, I think of a simple scene I witnessed during my sabbatical several years ago. As I sat at my desk in Assisi looking out across the piazza in front of the Cathedral, there were a dozen kids playing soccer. The twelfth century stone lions served as goal posts and the door of the Church was the goal.


The Pastor walked by the kids on his way to Mass and stopped. He puzzled over whether he should yell at them about possibly doing damage with their games. And then he smiled and went into Church.


They looked on with amazement at Father, this little incarnation of mercy. They wondered about him and about who he was. And as they played their games, they trusted that he was inside praying for them; that that when they would get lost in the coming years, that he would help them get home; and that when the pain would get like the cross he would help them to understand.


They need him to be their Priest, and to lead them to Jesus. And, with the grace of God, he will try.



Monsignor James P. Moroney

Rector


Father DeSimone’s First Mass Homily


As an older brother whom you have called Father, I have been particularly touched by the wondrous ways in which Christ has conformed you to his own image. The words spoken by the Bishop as he placed the chalice and paten into your hands a mere 30 hours ago have been lived by you since that your mother first carried you in her arms. Through all the years, on all the many roads, you have sought to know what you were doing, to imitate the mysteries you have celebrated and to conform yourself to the mystery of the Lord’s Cross.


I am also touched by the appropriateness of the wonderful Gospel which the Church has chosen for this day on which, for the first time, the sacrifice is offered at your hands for our good and the good of all his holy Church.


Anointed yesterday

For after thirty years of Priesthood, I can understand Elijah, to whom God gave the grace to know Elisha, the one who would succeed him.


Notice it was not Elijah who chose Elisha, it was God. Like Bishop McManus calling Father Desimone to the Priesthood yesterday morning, Elijah chose this young disciple because God had told him to.


And just as Elijah threw his cloak on the new prophet’s shoulders, so did Father Rose place a chasuble over his head. And as Elijah anointed the prophet Elisha, so did Bishop McManus smear Father Desimone’s hands with the holy Chrism.


For just as Elisha responded to the call of the Lord and followed Elijah, so does Nick


Follow me

You are not unlike the mysterious figure in today’s Gospel, whom Saint Luke only refers to only as someone. This unknown figure goes up to Jesus on the road and says with all your enthusiasm: “I will follow you wherever you go” (Lk 9:57).


The figure is a sort of type, a foreshadowing of the Priest who yesterday knelt before his Bishop and folded his hands between the Bishop’s palms, as if between the hands of Christ, and promised obedience for the rest of his life.


It’s an act which the world finds laughable and totally beyond belief. To give up your own will, for the will of another? Can’t you think for yourself?You’re bright. Don’t you want to be success? Didn’t you hear Jesus when he says follow me to a life with no place to rest your head? Didn’t you hear Jesus when he promised that they would revile and persecute his followers as they reviled and persecuted him? Follow me? Follow him to what? To poverty? To pain? To sacrifice? To the cross?


No wonder there’s a vocation shortage. Sounds like we’re lacking a very good marketing strategy.


And if we were selling a commercial product, that would be ever so true. But what Father Desimone has given up his life for is not a product, but a person. A man who hangs upon a cross.


And when, as a little kid, that man first started whispering in your heart: follow me...And when on Mount Saint James, at the strangest times, you would hear him whisper: follow me...and when even on the Janiculum Hill he would smile down at you and whisper, follow me....he was calling you to a life of perfect joy...a sacrifice of praise...which leads to the heart of the meaning of life.


To the cross. To the place where there is no control nor desire for control, no decisions to be made, no problems to figure out or programs to plan, but only you and Christ and the cross and the people to whom he sends you.


The disciple tells the Lord to whom he has promised obedience that he wants to go bury his father, and say good bye to him family, and the Lord says no. “Let the dead bury their dead. You...you do what I tell you, and go out and proclaim the Kingdom of God.


Only God’s will matters, no matter what your head or your heart or your gut tell you. It is God’s will and the will of his Church to which you totally give your life.


The last thing Maximilian Kolbe wanted to do was to starve to death at the bottom of a pit. But it was God’s will. The last thing Damian of Molakai wanted to do was to go work with lepers on an island half way across the world. But it was God’s will.


Of all the promises a Priest takes, perhaps the most counter-cultural is the promise of obedience. But perhaps it is also the most important. For it says there is something greater than me here...a mystery of God’s love in which dying is more important than living, letting go more important than clinging on, surrender more important than control, and obedience more important than being right. As the Lord Jesus hung upon the cross, in perfect obedience to the Father, he let go of everything, to his last breath in perfect fulfillment of God’s will. Conformed to that perfect obedience, the Priest is called to do the same.


So when the world looks at that man in black with the funny white collar who has given up striving for success, career, and family and even his own will in the name of God they will see not Nick Desimone or Jim Moroney, or Charlie Armey, or Mike Rose. They will see Christ.


For in the end, that’s what it’s all about.


We’re here today because we love you, Father. We love you as a son, as a brother, as a friend, and now, as a Priest.


You will take up the cup of salvation and call upon the Lord for us, you will offer his perfect sacrifice for us, joining us to him and making sense of our lives. You will baptize us into his death and resurrection, feed us with his Body and Blood, seal our covenants, heal our sick, forgive our sins and bury our dead. You will be Christ for us.


Not because we chose you, but because he chose you, and sent you to be our shepherd and our Priest.


Saint Francis of Assisi used to say that if he met a saint and a priest on the road he would be nice to the saint, but he would kiss the hands of the Priest. We venerate those hands which you have placed into the hands of Christ and which will touch us with the mysteries of his love for many many years to come.



Monsignor James P. Moroney