“Planting Seeds and Reaping Fruit”

Homily for Mass of Ordination to the Priesthood of
Br. Mikhael Josip Maria of the Holy Cross and the Holy Name of Jesus, COSJ
January 11, 2025; St. Patrick’s Seminary

Introduction

In Church life one often hears a lot of talk about “planting seeds.”  We imitate the sower in our Lord’s parable of the farmer who cast seed which landed on different types of soil.  In Church life, we take up a lot of new initiatives and try to set people on the path of faith and deeper life in Christ.  In priestly ministry, we often do not know where that ends up, as the people we encounter we so often don’t see later in life.

While we need to continue planting seeds, occasionally we rejoice when we can reap the fruit of those seeds that have come to full blossom.  That’s what we do today.  The fruit reaped at priestly ordination was planted as a seed in that original first stirring in the young man’s heart that was the call to the Priesthood.  We hear in our first reading for this Mass of priestly ordination today the call of the prophet Jeremiah.  Each prophet has his own particular call; each experience of that call is unique, and personal to the servant whom God has chosen.  In Jeremiah’s case we hear the Lord’s words to him: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.”

The Priestly Call: Personal and Common

The word “formed” here has the sense of clay being formed into pottery: the potter shapes the clay, continually refining it, until it takes the desired form, and then he bakes it in the heat of the oven.  The clay is the raw material for the pottery, but it only becomes useful after it is shaped and baked into a vessel, which has the practical purpose of containing things.  And so it is with priestly formation: yes, there are lots of rules and regulations, there is a rule of life, there are evaluations and grades, there are expectations, and so forth.  This is all for the sake of shaping the raw material that is the man’s call to the Priesthood so that it can achieve its greatest potential and so become a vessel for God. 

But in addition to the molding of the clay into the proper shape, it also has to be baked in the oven.  So it is for those servants whom God calls to ordained ministry: they must be baked in the oven that is the crucible of suffering, confronting challenges, dealing with setbacks, overcoming obstacles, and learning how to compensate for shortcomings.

As it was with the prophets of old, so it continues to be with God’s servants today.  Each young man called to the Priesthood experiences the reception of that call in a unique way, personally tailored to him himself, and he must go through this process of being formed and baked in the oven.  We rejoice today that Br. Mikhael Josip Maria of the Holy Cross and the Holy Name of Jesus has successfully discerned and pursued that call, which brings him to the altar today.  It began early in his life, growing up in his own country marked as it was by the strife of civil war and oppression of the Church.  And then later in life, as a young man and coming to this country, he had to adjust to a new and very different culture, mentality, political institutions and, not the least of all, language.  He experienced initial setbacks in seeking to pursue his priestly calling, and now, in God’s inscrutable Providence, he will be the first one of his class ordained to the Priesthood!  We thank God for his mother being able to be here with us, along with other family members, which has afforded us this yet other example of God’s surprising grace.

However, while each man has his own personal experience in receiving, discerning and pursuing the call, the destination is the same for all.  Our Lord lays that out for us in our Gospel reading for this Mass of ordination.  The passage is taken from St. John’s account of the Last Supper.  This scene actually goes on for five chapters in his Gospel.  Notice how often, in this short passage, the word “love” is mentioned here: “As the Father loves me, so I also love you.  Remain in my love”; “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you”; “This I command you, to love one another”; and so forth.  Not only here, though – this refrain of love is repeated all throughout the five chapters.  This is the night before our Lord died, and he leaves no doubt as to what kind of Church he intended to leave behind, beginning with and building upon the foundation stones of the apostles.

The Ultimate Commandment

The commandment our Lord gave to his apostles that night before he died is the ultimate commandment, ultimate because it identifies who the priest is: the one who, with his Lord, lays down his life for his Church.  The temptation is to identify who the priest is by what he does: the priest is the one who celebrates the sacraments of Eucharist, Penance and Anointing of the Sick.  He prepares people for the sacraments and celebrates the sacraments for them.  He coordinates the various ministries in the parish.  The problem is, though, that this makes the Priesthood look like simply one job among many others in the Church, requiring nothing more than learning a certain set of skills in order to take on the role and fulfill the corresponding duties.  How easy it is to slip in this way of thinking in a world stripped of any sensitivity to the sacramental reality of life, that is, the truth that God reveals hidden, spiritual reality through visible, temporal symbols, even using the simplest of elements to serve this revealing purpose, such as water, bread, wine and oil.

To focus on what the priest does, then, stays at the surface.  What he does will only be beneficial for his people if it flows from who he is.

The identity of the priest is that of Jesus Christ, as exemplified in that Last Supper.  He began that evening by washing the feet of his disciples, to teach by example the primacy of charity.  Charity, of course, is love in action: not an idea, not a feeling, but the gift of self.  Only by his identity with the person of Jesus Christ in his self-abasement will the priest exemplify the primacy of charity in his ministry of Word and Sacrament, and so fulfill the command given him at his ordination when the bishop hands to him the paten and chalice with the bread and wine to be used for the sacrifice: “Understand what you will do, imitate what you will celebrate, and conform your life to the mystery of the Lord’s Cross.”

Friendship with Jesus Christ

Let us reflect further, then, on this revolutionary action (in the literal sense of the word, i.e., “turn around”) our Lord effects: the master lowers himself to become a friend to his disciples in washing their feet.

Clearly, in calling them his friends, he does not mean that he no longer considers them servants, that they are not to serve him and one another.  His command, actually, is the opposite: to do for each other the service that he has done for them.  Rather, it is a matter of the kind of service that they provide.  One kind is slavish service, that which the ancient pagan world understood to mean humility, the kind that slaves render to their masters through fear (such as the lowest of all types of service: washing dirty feet).  But the other kind of service is free and filial.  This is the kind of service that is compatible with friendship.  And this is why our Lord explains to his apostles that the reason he no longer calls them slaves is “because a slave does not know what his master is doing.”  Instead, he says, “I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.”

This brings us back to the repeated command of love: when service is carried out from a place of love, it is not slavish, not burdensome, not a cause of resentment.  On the contrary, when you perform a service for someone whom you really love, it becomes a delight.  This is why our Lord began this section of his farewell discourse to his apostles with the commandment, “Remain in my love.”  Remain: that is, abide.  Abiding in the Lord’s presence.  The priest’s life of prayer is always the essential starting point of his service of communion, for it is in this way that he cultivates those virtues which enable his communion with God to then flow out to strengthening the bonds of communion in the Body of Christ.  And when you truly love someone, isn’t the greatest delight simply being in that person’s presence, remaining with the one you love?

This then adds another level of significance to what we are about today.  We have the great joy today of celebrating the first ordination to the Priesthood of a member of the Contemplatives of St. Joseph.  The community is anchored in the contemplative life, what in Church jargon we call “semi-contemplative”: basically, monks who exercise apostolic ministry.  As such, the COSJs model for our whole Archdiocese the primacy of prayer, from which must flow the priest’s pastoral care of the people of God: contemplation coupled with attentive tender-loving pastoral care, a spiritual resource and true spiritual powerhouse for our entire Archdiocese.  It is only in this way that the priest can attain holiness in the way that it is meant for those in the priestly state – that is, to be the living image of Jesus Christ to his people.  And this, indeed, is the last promise that the one to be ordained priest makes before pronouncing his promise of obedience: “Do you resolve to be united more closely each day to Christ the High Priest, who offered himself for us to the Father as a pure sacrifice, and with him to consecrate yourself to God for the salvation of all?”

Conclusion

That is the fruit to be reaped at the last harvest, the salvation of all.  And the work of molding a young man into a vessel capable of carrying and distributing the grace of God for the salvation of the souls entrusted to his pastoral care, such that this fruit can be reaped, is a wondrous and varied enterprise.  I would therefore like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who have had a role in accompanying Br. Mikhael in his pursuit of God’s call in his life, beginning with where it all begins and where the foundation is laid: you, Br. Mikhael’s parents, and your loving family.  It is in the family, the domestic church, where the virtues of the Christian life are first learned and lived out, and when done well enables the children in the family to discover their vocation in life and live it out faithfully and well, such that all in the family may grow to know the happiness of righteous living that God wants for all of us

Of course, I wish to extend a special word of thanks as well to Fr. Vito Perrone and the community of the Contemplatives of St. Joseph, into whose charism Br. Mikhael has grown and flourished.  No less thanks is due to you, the professors, formatters and staff here at St. Patrick’s Seminary.  And last but not least, Br. Mikhael Josip Maria of the Holy Cross and the Holy Name of Jesus: thank you for your relentless pursuit of God’s call in your life.  The seed of your priestly vocation has now come to full blossom, and we reap its fruit today.  It is at the same time a commission to you: now it falls to you to begin the work of planting seeds, the seeds of pastoral charity for the people of God, a work of planting that imitates the self-emptying charity of Christ himself.  May your abiding with the one you love help you to imitate him, our great High Priest, for the glory of God and the salvation of those whom God will entrust your pastoral care.