40th Anniversary of Ordination to the Priesthood
22nd July 2007

Homily preached by Fr James on Sunday, 22nd July on the occasion of his 40th anniversary of Ordination to the Priesthood.

A friend sent a card the other day. It read: ‘Many happy returns on your 40th wedding anniversary’! The wedding was crossed out and ordination was written in its place. I had to smile. I suppose you could say that a priest is wedded to the Church. But I prefer the words of St Paul in today’s second reading: ‘I became the servant of the Church when God made me responsible for delivering God’s message to you’. Paul did this on a grand scale. We priests share that responsibility, each in our own way and according to our gifts and limitations. Paul goes on to say: ‘The message was a mystery hidden for generations and centuries and has now been revealed. The mystery is Christ among you, your hope of glory: this is the Christ that we proclaim’. These are wonderful words: powerful, profound, confident. The proclamation involves all of us. It is made to us and it is handed on by us, priests and people alike.

In the Ordination Mass the Bishop presents to the newly-ordained priest the bread and wine that have been brought up in procession by members of the congregation. As he does so he says these words: ‘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’.

Some weeks ago I happened to come into the Cathedral through the west doors while Bishop Michael was celebrating Mass. I looked first at the great crucifix on the Rood screen. Underneath the Bishop was praying the Eucharistic Prayer and his arms were outstretched in the ancient attitude of prayer. As he stood at the altar I saw the mystery of the Lord’s cross symbolised in those outstretched arms. Every priest is, as it were, a focal point of a world of loss and expectation, of grief and joy, of birth and death, of faith and hope, that somehow form the essence of our weekly coming together for Sunday Mass. The priest, this fragile human symbol, is the ‘alter Christus’, an ikon of Christ himself: he who stands at the centre of a universe of love and pain that is made present in each person as they goes to receive Communion in that moment when differences of age and education, foolishness and wisdom, frailty and strength all dissolve before the consecrated host.
You may ask yourself why the priest stands to pray with arms outstretched. It is to portray the vertical and horizontal axis of the cross. The upright body is a sign of the relationship between the priest and people and God; the outstretched arms symbolise his relationship with the people that he serves. A priest is called to be the sacrament of the two great commandments – love of God and love of neighbour. I have come to see more and more clearly that the love at the heart of Christianity is a cruciform love, centred on God and radiating out to others.

You might well say – isn’t this true for all of us? Isn’t each of us called to embody these two commandments? And you would be right. We are, all of us, journeying together on a great pilgrimage of grace, priests and people, driven forward by faith and sharing the joys and hazards of the journey.

But a priest is, in a special way, a ‘vir propter homines’ – a man for others.
He promises obedience to his Bishop on the day of his ordination. In doing so he hands over a large degree of self-determination, allowing another person, under God, to direct the course of his life. Little did I think, on that day 40 years ago, that the God of surprises, through the wisdom (or folly) of Bishop Peter Smith, would lead me to this place on this day!

A priest’s commitment to celibacy marks his enrolment in a particular school of loving. It is here that he learns to give his heart away to all who need him. At its best, celibacy is about freedom: freedom to love more but also freedom to love without conditions. To love, not just the loveable but the unlovely, the difficult, the crabby and the hypercritical. But we don’t have anyone like this at St John’s, do we?  The reality is that whatever sacrifice is entailed in priestly celibacy is more than repaid by the affection, support and friendship of his people.

The priest’s parish becomes his extended family. It is from the people he serves that the priest receives a hundred-fold – more than he could ever have imagined on the day of his ordination. He is called to exercise his ministerial priesthood in the service of the priesthood of all the baptised in a Church which understands itself as ‘communion’. This means working with people in a truly collaborative way as partners in mission. The Preface to the Chrism Mass reminds us of the three-fold function of the priest: to lead God’s holy people, to nourish them by his word, and strengthen them by the sacraments. .

Today is also the feast of St Mary Magdalen. She is a key figure in the Resurrection narrative. The Gospels tell of her encounter with the Risen Christ and how she recognised him when he spoke her name. She reminds us that the cross is not the whole story: that death gives way to life: that pain and struggle and darkness break through to resurrection. That same Lord speaks our name too. He calls us to walk with him, to hold fast to the mystery that is Christ revealed, no matter what happens, to celebrate our faith in prayer and sacrament, and to work together to build up the Kingdom of God.

A small boy was once asked what he thought made a good priest. He said: ‘he must be kind and caring and never boring’. I hope that in the space of 40 years I may have achieved one of these!