coming out of Boston and elsewhere in the Church about clerical sex abuse against

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1 Homily for Holy Thursday 2014 The year 2003 was a difficult to begin your studies at the seminary. As I unpacked my belongings at Mt Angel Seminary to begin my vocational discernment, I for one was not prepared for the gut wrenching news that was coming out of Boston and elsewhere in the Church about clerical sex abuse against children. It became quite evident to any seminarian that as he would daily discern whether or not God was calling them to become a priest, a shadow was going to hang over all of our heads. Thoughts began to fill your mind as would some of my family and friends now think that I was a sexual predator because I believed God wanted me to be a priest? Was that my motivation from desiring this life, to hurt God s little ones? Would celibacy twist me into some repressed sexual monster? How would people react when they saw me in public wearing priest clothing, would they hide their children away in fear, look at me with hate or just indifferently pass on by? Yet in the midst of all these fears and temptations from the evil one to push me away from Christ, I could not shake the desire in my heart that it was still worth it to discern if this was my calling, to become a priest of Jesus Christ, the one who invited the 12 apostles to become his first priests to feed his people with

2 the gift of the Eucharist and to serve them as He served us to draw all peoples closer to His Sacred Heart! In spite of all the apprehensions I may have had about how people would perceive me in a world that no longer elevates priests as irreproachable and realizes just how sinful they can become, it was still worth bearing this stigma if even just once in my life I took a piece of bread in my hands and said this is my body and lifted up the chalice of salvation and called on the name of the Lord saying this is the chalice of my blood! It is in the Eucharist that the priesthood of Jesus Christ becomes what a young man would lay down his life for; that day after day the Church calls you to approach the altar of God and make present once again this most holy night, the sacrificial memorial of the Lord, when Christ would anticipate his own sacrifice on the Cross the following day, the perfect offering for sins, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass that has nourished God s people throughout the ages and which St. Thomas Aquinas said is why all of the other sacraments exists, that they may allow us enter into communion with our Eucharistic Lord! Just as the people of Israel believed that every Passover supper was to make present once again the first Passover, their deliverance for slavery and death to be

3 sent out into the desert to become a holy people that would daily offer God sacrifice and praise, so too do we believe every Mass to be a sacramental representation of the paschal mystery, that is the passion, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ to His Heavenly Father. This is this great mystery of faith that Jesus entrusted to his apostles on this holy night when he offered himself to his heavenly father and transformed bread and wine into his very self, so that each day the Church can rejoice that truly Jesus is with us to the very end of the world, the very same Jesus who once walked this earth, died for us, rose for us, he is there in every sacramental communion we make, where we worship him and draws closer to us than we can possibly imagine. My friends, as a priest to know that though you are a sinner and so very far from imitating in all things the life and ministry of Jesus, you can still dare to believe that you can make the words of Jesus Christ your own, just as St Paul made them his own so very long ago, this is my body, this is my blood, and Christ then willing comes down to lay vulnerable and available on our altars, that is when you know that you made the best decision of your life, to give it all to Him, to trust that he will not forsake his Church even if too many of his priests have lived in darkness and trust that Jesus will be generous in calling more men to become holy priests, it

4 is then that you know Jesus Christ is faithful beyond comprehension and loves you with an everlasting love! And after you eat his body and drink his blood, as a priest you realize that you are not merely a functionary whose sole task is to be engaged in liturgical rites as absolutely essential they are to your identity and mission, especially the Eucharist which is THE reason for the priesthood! No he must after he has been fed with the body and blood of God get down and dirty washing people s feed and become that spiritual father to others, and make the words of Jesus his own, I lay down my life for my friends. Nor is this command just for priests, but each of us! What a thing it would be for a priest, for every Christian for that matter, that at the end of our lives people said of him having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. That is why Jesus washed his apostles feet, in that humbling gesture of washing away the dirt and grim, did he not show how much he loved us to his last breathe and invites us to experience great joy in doing the same!? And did he perhaps see on that night as he washed his apostles feet all the sins of his priests through the ages, the filth as Pope Benedict XVI so aptly called it that priests inflicted on those most vulnerable, so many who he too would die for

5 and beg the Father that they be given a spirit of repentance and accept justice and true conversion for their sin! Tonight, my friends, is for us to rejoice in the priestly love and mission of Jesus Christ. It is to thank him for the gift of the Eucharist and the priests he calls to offer his holy sacrifice till the end of days, remembering too how all of God s faithful are also take part in this sacrifice, uniting all their intentions to that of the priests. It is thank Christ for his witness of service in instituting the holy priesthood and calling each of us to serve one another in charity and in truth. It is to thank Christ for all the holy priests and fellow Catholics we have known through the years and to forgive those who trespassed against us. It is to rejoice in that night in Jerusalem more than 2000 years ago which draws us into the great paschal mystery of Christ, that the joy of the Last Supper and commission to service is soon to be shattered in the garden of Gethsemane and the drama for the Cross. Lord Jesus, stay with us this night, prepare our hearts for the passion of tomorrow and strengthen us to witness your resurrection to new life.

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