The Most Important Way to Prepare for Priesthood

 This week, my good friend and brother, Fr. Cristiano Barbosa and I returned to St. John's Seminary to say "goodbye" as we conclude our full time work there. Fr. Cristiano offered the Mass and I preached. 

Homily on the Memorial of St. Vincent DePaul

St. John Seminary

September 27, 2023

“Whatever house you enter, stay there and leave from there.”

“Enter. Stay. Leave.” So much of priesthood is lived in these three movements. 

Enter: 

The priest enters into the lives of people. It really is astonishing the places the Lord allows us to enter. The people to whom we are sent welcome us to enter into their families and into their homes. They welcome us to enter into their life of prayer, into their temptations and into their sins, and into their joys and into their sorrows. People want priests who will draw close to them and enter into their lives.

Stay:

The priest stays with people. He stays with those who are searching, struggling, suffering, or stumbling. He stays with them and walks with them. He stands at their side. He stays and lifts them up when they have fallen. He even, at times, stays with them in order to carry them. He stays with them to feed them with the Eucharist and to console them with the truth. He stays with them when their life is falling apart. People want priests who will stay with them.

Leave:

Although he enters and stays, the priest also leaves. He leaves because–although he does indeed prolong the presence of the Good Shepherd in the midst of the flock–he is nonetheless, not THE Good Shepherd. He leaves because one sows and another reaps. He leaves because nothing belongs to him. He is entrusted for a time with a particular corner of the Lord’s vineyard. Then, like the apostles before him, he moves onto other villages to enter, to stay, and to leave. People want priests who will leave them in the secure knowledge that they have been loved.

Three years ago, Fr. Cristiano and I entered this house. I know I speak also for him when I say how grateful we are to the Lord that we were allowed by him to enter into your lives. We are grateful that you welcomed us, that you opened your hearts to us, and that you shared your life with us.

We were privileged to stay with you, to live closely to you, to be near you in your joys and in your struggles. To stay in prayer with you and–even now– to stay in friendship with you.

And, of course, now we leave. But even this is a privilege. Because we leave only to wait for you to join us in the vineyard. The harvest is abundant, but the laborers are few. The seminary itself is a place to enter, to stay, and to leave. 

All of you, like the apostles, were summoned here by the Lord. As you enter into another year of formation, to stay with each other, and to prepare to one day leave for priestly ministry, I’d like to offer one piece of advice. The most important thing you can do in the seminary is to grow in love. A priest who loves is a priest who will do amazing work. A priest who loves will be joyful and will attract people to Christ. People are starving to encounter real, true, authentic, and pure love. Do everything you can to become men of extraordinary charity. Avoid petty dramas, rivalries, contention, ambition, and bitterness. These things make the heart small and they destroy love and joy. Shake such silly dust from your feet. Instead, put charity above everything else. Love one another here and now. That is the best preparation for priesthood.

Doctrinal purity, yes. Liturgical exactness, yes. Homiletic excellence, yes. But, the most important thing you can do now to prepare for your future priestly ministry is to burn with love for God and for one another. St. Vincent de Paul knew this. He said that the priest was called to inflame the hearts of men, to do what the Son of God did; to set the world alight with the love of God. 

If everyday–here and now–you grow in your love for God and for one another, you will one day enter the lives of your parishioners, you will stay close to them, and you will leave them all the better because in and through your priestly ministry, they will have encountered the Incarnate Love of God Himself, Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd.

The Sermon on the Mount: Radical Inclusion for Radical Conversion

 This is my homily at St. John's Seminary on Sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time February 13, 2023

“If you trust in God, you too shall live.”  

Before Jesus delivered his magnificent Sermon on the Mount, St. Matthew tells us that Jesus first saw the crowds. Then he climbed the mountain and sat down. His disciples came to him and then he began to teach them. As we read through this sermon—which takes up three entire chapters of St. Matthew’s Gospel—we should always keep in mind how it began. Jesus saw the crowd. He saw them truly. He saw the complications of their lives, their sins, their struggles. He saw their fears. He saw their hearts. He saw all of this, and so He climbed the mountain and sat down. His disciples came to him and he began to teach them. 

They came to him. They all came to him. This is what you might call the radical inclusivity of Jesus. He invites everyone to live a new life. He invites everyone to ascend the mountain and to experience radical conversion. He is radically inclusive because no one is excluded from the possibility of radical conversion. The radical inclusivity of Jesus is always ordered to the Universal Call to Holiness. 

Jesus invites everyone up into a world previously unimaginable. He invites us into a life of beatitude. The radical inclusion of Jesus is that the life of grace can reach and can transform every situation, every vice, every sin, no matter how deeply rooted or impossible the situation might seem. When Jesus saw the crowd, he saw everyone. Jesus excludes no one from the opportunity to have a radical conversion because he wills all men to be saved. 

A perpetual danger to the Christian life is the attempt to reduce it through, what St. Paul calls today, “the wisdom of this age;” a worldly wisdom that would empty the Cross of its power. Worldly wisdom—the wisdom of this age—reduces Christianity to a club instead of a new way of life. The Sermon on the Mount invites us—invites everyone—to become part of something new. The Sermon on the Mount invites us to “be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect.” Worldly wisdom—the wisdom of this age—will always reject and dismiss as impossible, such a noble calling. It will see the Sermon on the Mount as too demanding, too impossible, and too cruel. Worldly wisdom—in its version of total inclusivity—will always wind up excluding some from ascending the mountain with Jesus.  

Worldly wisdom will conclude that one person’s anger or another person’s lust runs too deep for them to be converted. Worldly wisdom concludes that some situations are too complicated for grace to work. Worldly wisdom will teach that depending solely upon God is too risky a proposition. The radical inclusion of worldly wisdom only invites people to be more worldly, more distant from God, and, ultimately, more excluded. The radical inclusion of the Gospel is that of radical conversion. To be converted from the old world of sin and death into the new world of beatitude. 

If we read through the Sermon of the Mount from beginning to end (which I recommend we all do regularly), we will immediately think of complicated pastoral situations. What about the divorced and remarried? What about the person living an unchaste life? What about the person deeply wounded by someone—how can she possibly forgive? How am I not going to be anxious about tomorrow, or seek first the Kingdom of God? 

These complicated situations—and there have always been complicated situations—can seem like insurmountable objections to the Sermon on the Mount. How will a new generation of priests preach the Gospel into these situations? It seems that two pitfalls should be avoided. They both arise from a deadly worldly wisdom.  

The first would be to underestimate the life of grace. The priest of our time must be convinced of the transforming power of grace. No situation is so complicated, no temptation so strong, no sin so deeply implanted that grace cannot radically transform it. This, of course, begins with the priest himself becoming more and more radically transformed by grace.  

The second pitfall would be to live our preaching as though it were merely a sort of trench warfare, a debate about issues, but detached from any sort of love for the people to whom we are sent. This kind of preaching makes us sound as though we are concerned only with winning debates rather than winning souls; with showing people how clever we are rather than showing them something beautiful to love. When Jesus saw the crowds, he climbed the mountain. He drew people up to show them something better. He drew them up to show them what is possible. Priestly preaching shows others that there is a better way; shows others that the life of beatitude is open to them. Priestly preaching helps others to discover the splendor of truth and helps them to be set free by that truth. Priests must have hearts like the Good Shepherd. When our Good Shepherd saw the crowds, he went up the mountain to show them something beautiful so that they could be radically converted by what they saw and heard.  

The priest must always have that same joyful, patient, confident, and tranquil trust in the Truth. There is nothing confronting us today that Jesus did not see on the day he saw that crowd. In any battle, the advantage belongs to the one who holds the high ground. Therefore, we should always draw people up to the lofty heights of the Sermon on the Mount. 

Recently, as I read through the Sermon on the Mount, something I never noticed before struck me. At the conclusion of the sermon, Matthew tells us that Jesus came back down the mountain. Immediately, a leper approached Jesus. If anyone felt excluded in society, it would have been this man. But somehow, he is moved to go to Jesus. The man says to Jesus, “Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean.” And, as we all know, Jesus says, “I do will it. Be made clean.” And immediately, the man was cured. 

This man becomes like a key to understanding the entire Sermon on the Mount. No matter what our affliction, no matter what our sin, no matter what complicated situations we find ourselves in, Jesus can be trusted. If we go to him, he will change our life for the better. He will include us . . . by changing us. He will heal. He will forgive. He will give what is needed for a totally new way of life. All we need to do is trust him. The man with leprosy approached Jesus with confidence, and he was given new life. No one is excluded from the invitation to the life of beatitude. And the life of beatitude is found only in Jesus Christ. There is no beatitude apart from Jesus Christ. 

The greatest challenge confronting the Church at this particular moment in time is not about one particular moral issue or about particular pastoral approaches. The great challenge is lack of faith. Is Jesus Christ trustworthy? The great challenge is whether we trust him enough to build our house upon the rock of his word or whether we will build on the changing sands of worldly wisdom. Do we trust him? Do we believe him? Do we? 

Beatitude is bestowed upon those who trust Jesus. The Eucharist is given to those who trust Jesus. New life is given to those who trust Jesus. The leper’s situation seemed impossible. His condition seemed beyond healing. He seemed destined to isolation, shame, and death. But he trusted Jesus and was saved. The priest must be a man who looks with sympathy on every person—and through his preaching and teaching—leads them up the mountain so that they can see beautiful things, be converted, and become blessed. The world needs priests who can look with love at the crowds and announce to them the same good news that the leper discovered.  A good news that is so simple, beautiful, and filled with grace. A good news that is good news for all the people.  A good news that—when accepted—brings about radical conversion and new life. All we have to do is trust it. This good news is the Word Made Flesh, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And as Sirach concisely put it: “If you trust God, you [too] shall live.” “Put your trust in Jesus Christ.” That is what the whole world—everyone included—needs to hear. And that is what her future priests need to preach.