Homily for the Ordination to Priesthood of Alan Ting Yuet Wong SJ Jesús Nicodemus Lariosa SJ St Mary s Church, North Sydney Saturday, 16 th June 2018 1
I repeat my welcome to Mr and Mrs Wong, and to Mr and Mrs Lariosa, and the brother and sisters and family of Alan and Nico. Supporting a son in his desire for priesthood is a courageous act, especially these days, and although there is joy in you seeing your sons so strong in their sense of vocation, there can also be a sense of loss for you, in terms of the next generation and the family name. It is true that few vocations towards the priesthood would survive without the support of the parents, so the wider Church and the Australian Jesuit Province expresses its gratitude and appreciation for your largeness of soul, and your love for your sons. I congratulate my brother Jesuits on these ordinations of Rob and Alan and Nico. Fr Rob was ordained two weeks ago in New Zealand, and therefore can now forever claim the title of seniority in priesthood to both Alan and Nico. Your triple ordination is a real shot in the arm for the Australian Jesuit Province, and you three are the first to graduate from this new development of Australian scholastics undertaking their theology in Boston. So the Rector of Faber Community in Boston, Fr James Gartland SJ, present here today, is special, and we welcome you and thank you Fr Gartland. Two weeks ago I ordained a young man for priesthood in my Port Pirie Diocese, South Australia. I had assigned him to a remote country parish on the Eyre Peninsula, and on his way to catch up with me a couple of days before the ordination he hit a kangaroo, or it hit him. May your introduction to priesthood, Nico and Alan, be smoother, if for nothing else than the well-being of your motor car and the wildlife of Australia. In a few moments, Alan and Nico, you will lie prostrate, stretched out in an act of submission in the presence of the People of God, while the Saints of the Church are invoked on your behalf, over you a great cloud of witnesses, and the people will sing over you, Bless these chosen ones. Bless these chosen ones and make them holy. Bless these chosen ones and make them holy and consecrate them for sacred duties. The word of election, of choice by the Church, was uttered over you just a few moments ago. Having been assured by those responsible for your formation, the Bishop announced, I choose you, and the People of God affirmed the choice by their applause. In your first 2
vows in the Society you took the initiative to make your offering to God; on this occasion it is the Church which calls you forth, to Holy Orders. It is a different dynamic. As it says in the Letter to the Hebrews, No one takes this honour on himself, but each is called by God, as Aaron was. What has brought you to this point? In the first instance it is as we sung in the psalm, the God who searched you and who knows you, the one to whom all your ways are open, the one who formed you in your mother s womb. Then there is the faith of your families, and those who taught you not only to know about Jesus but to know Jesus. There was your wider upbringing, your reading, and reflection and the people who made a mark on your lives. Bringing you to the Society, it was in the case of Alan your schooling and the influence of the men you mentioned to me, Fr Tony Smith, Fr Tom Lake-Smith, what you read about the Jesuit Saints in Brian Moore s book, Men for Others. For Nico it was Jesuits like John Drury, Ian Howells, Ian Cribb, Sasha, and the example of the Filipino scholastic Richie Fernando who gave his life for the sake of others, and for Alan there was Matteo Ricci, striking out into a whole new civilisation and culture, grappling with it, and loving it and dedicating himself to the people. There is the central role of the Eucharist in both your lives, drawing people to sacred intimacy. There was the witness of some of the Popes you mentioned, Paul VI and Francis. There was William Barry s work A Friendship Like No Other opening you up to what Pope Francis calls the divine allure. All this you bring with you today. The readings you chose for this Mass are most apposite. Why have you been burdened with the care for all these people, a task you and yourselves alone cannot do. Like the seventy elders chosen to share in the work of Moses, and the Spirit came upon them, you have been chosen to enter in a special way into the priesthood of Christ, to minister to and strengthen the priesthood of all the baptised. You are not set over them; you are set to minister to them. Bless these chosen ones, Alan and Nico, and make them holy and consecrate them for holy duties. There are two actions that are central to this sacred ceremony, the laying on of hands and the anointing with Chrism. The laying on of hands is a gesture that in Holy Scripture goes back to the time of Moses, as does the anointing. It is in the Church the most ancient form of consecration and dedication and blessing. It was a gesture of commissioning in the early Church, as when Paul wrote to Timothy telling him that he had in him a spiritual gift which was given to you when the prophets spoke and the body of elders laid their hands on you. For us Christians there is the healing scene of Jesus restoring the sick - as the sun was 3
setting. He lay His hands on each of them and cured them. (Luke 4: 40) That sacred gesture will be conferred upon you today, Alan and Nico, for the once and only time in your life, by the Bishop and your soon-to-be brother priests, in the presence of the Church. In his first Mass of the Chrism on Holy Thursday as Pope, Pope Francis took up that second symbol of our priesthood, the anointing with Chrism. Francis referred to the Psalm which speaks of the precious oil flowing down the head of Aaron, down his beard onto his robes, and indeed to the hem of his garments. The Holy Father says that the image of oil spreading, flowing to the hem, is an image of the priestly anointing through which Christ the Anointed One reaches to the ends of the earth, symbolised by the robe. Our liturgical robes as we have them today are symbols of our office as priest. We don them when about to perform a sacred action in the liturgy. Francis talked of the symbolism of the High Priest s robes. On the shoulder pieces there were twelve onyx stones, six each side, each with a name of one of the tribes of Israel inscribed on it. The names of the twelve tribes were also engraved on the High Priest s breastplate. Francis saw the High Priest s robes as the ancestor of our present day chasuble, and that as priests we carry on our shoulders the people entrusted to our care, and we bear their names next to our hearts. When donning our chasuble it might well make us feel, he said, upon our shoulders and in our hearts the burdens and faces of our faithful people. The purpose of the precious oil was more than simply to lend fragrance to the person of Aaron; it overflowed to the edges, to the hem, indicating that the anointing is meant for the people on the edges, those on the outskirts, the poor and unheeded. Your hands will be anointed with the Consecrated Chrism your hands are henceforth to be in a special way hands of healing and blessing, hands of justice and mercy, hands of compassion and reconciliation and care for the poor and struggling; hands of anointing of others. Francis also tells us that a good priest can be recognised by the way his people are anointed: this is a clear proof. You are to bless God s people, Alan and Nico, with the oil of gladness, affirming them as precious and loved beyond all measure by the Father of all life. Concerning the vocation of the Jesuit priest, you know what the Jesuit General Congregation documents have said, that the ministry of priests of the Society is to be particularly directed towards those who have not heard the Gospel, those who are at the margins of the Church or of society, the voiceless and the powerless, those weak in faith or alienated from it, those whose values are undermined by contemporary culture, and those whose needs are greater than they can bear. Those documents say that the mission of the Jesuit priest is how to find words that speak to the men and women of our time who are no longer moved by the Christian 4
message; how to be faithful to the tradition of the Church and at the same time interpret it in secularised cultures; how to minister effectively to both the poor and the rich; how best to serve in a Church in which there are tensions. You are called to live your Jesuit vocation as a priest as described by Pope Paul VI, placed between the boundaries of human culture and the deepest human desires, and the Gospel the area of the boundaries and the crossroads of ideologies. That is where Jesuits are to be, said Pope Paul VI and Pope Francis. Your formation in the intellectual apostolate, takes you, Alan and Nico, into an apostolate amidst the ideologies. Pope Francis comments that Jesus began to preach the Good News in the Galilee of the Gentiles, a crossroads for people of different races, cultures and religions, akin to our situations now, he said. He speaks of the need to bring together the Catholic identity to meet the different souls existing in a multi-cultural society. The great Jesuit theologian our Fr Karl Rahner wrote in an article entitled The Priest of Tomorrow Some men live with the comprehension that they do not belong to themselves, that they are consecrated to the mystery to whom they have said yes with all their being. They live in a way that awakens the experience of God in others. They awaken in others the question of eternal life. They have the scent of the forgiving, loving God about them. They herald that love transcends all egotism, giving witness to the fact that we are most ourselves when we give ourselves away. There is so much to ponder in that, Alan and Nico, daunting as it might seem, but be full of hope and strength through your knowledge of the love of God that surrounds you and calls you. Pope Francis reflects on the way the word gaze is used in the Gospels, the gaze of Peter, the gaze of the rich young man. The heart of a priest is a precious object of the gaze of God. Pope John Paul II said in an intriguing phrase the priest is one who prolongs the presence of Christ among others. God sees in each of you the heart of a man who stood up, in front of a gathering of the People of God and answered yes to questions that will change his life, and then prostrated himself, as low as he could, to invoke the Saints to guide him. God sees the heart of a man who wants to live the Beatitudes of Jesus to be poor in spirit, a sharer of loss, gentle, wanting justice, merciful, pure in heart, willing to endure for the sake of true discipleship. 5
The Second Reading that you chose from Corinthians spoke of us as new creations, entrusted with the ministry of reconciliation, and that we are ambassadors in the name of Christ, and it is as if God Himself was appealing through us. May that sense of the presence of Christ with you be your strength as you serve as His priests. In the Gospel the Good Shepherd is prepared to lay down His life for His sheep, but His strength comes from the fact that He hears the voice of the Father. May the prayers of your priestly hearts enable you to listen and hear and know the promptings of the Sacred Heart. In an interview this year in Salt and Light, Father General Arturo Sosa spoke of the three Fathers General he has known in his life in the Society, Fathers Arrupe, Kolvenbach and Nicolas. He said that he asked their gifts for all of us. I constantly ask that for the Society: that we have the boldness for the impossible. That we really believe. He sees their attributes as boldness, creative fidelity and great kindness. The three of them spent their lives, Fr Sosa says, so that the Society could be bold, faithful and be in frontiers: be at the borders. And his prayer for young Jesuits was, Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid because the Lord is in human history and the Lord has promised to continue to be there. He is acting. Fear paralyses. Fear prevents us from seeing those signs of God s presence. Do not be afraid is the opposite.it s the same as be bold. What seems impossible to you today is possible for God, and it is possible for you, if you believe in God. The Holy Father s recent Apostolic Exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate, and note how often the theme of joy is even in the titles of the Pope s letters, is full of Ignatian insights and ideals. There is the sense of boldness, the magis, and discernment. He wrote, In all aspects of life we can continue to grow and offer something greater to God, even in those areas we find most difficult. We need, though, to ask the Holy Spirit to liberate us and to expel the fear that makes us ban Him from certain parts of our lives. God asks everything of us, yet He also gives everything to us. Discernment is an authentic process of leaving ourselves behind in order to approach the mystery of God, which helps us to carry out the mission to which He has called us, for the good of our brothers and sisters. (#175) May your brothers in the Society help you live this vocation as Jesuit priests, Alan and Nico. In his Spiritual Exercises St Ignatius has three questions that confront us, and might confront any young man present at this ceremony. Ignatius places us before a crucifix and has us ask the three questions, what have I done for Christ, what am I doing for Christ, what ought I do for Christ? You are making your own answer very profoundly to these questions today, Alan 6
and Nico, in the presence of the Church. May there be other young men here today called as you are by the Shepherd to care for Christ s flock. Your act of generous response to your vocation to be priests builds us all up, Alan and Nico. May we in turn care for you, nurture you, and strengthen you as you seek to live your vocation of Jesuit and priestly commitment amongst God s People. For the greater glory of God. In all things to love and to serve, said Father Ignatius. Deo gratias. Thanks be to God. Amen Bishop Greg O Kelly SJ Bishop of the Diocese of Port Pirie 7