The Spirit of the Lord has been given to me for the Lord has anointed me.
Isaiah 61 v1
A new priest soon discerns that just about everyone knows exactly how he should be spending every moment of his time. It is made even more unnerving when the new priest quickly learns that everyone also knows that, by some wonderful miracle, he has at least thirty hours in every day of his life rather than the modest twenty-four allotted to us by God in His wisdom. And, cheer up Father Grant! When and if you come in due time to be a parish priest you will soon find that the expectations placed on your new ministry continue to be as vast as they are unrealistic. Be consoled, though. It seems highly likely that Jesus suffered from the same kind of false expectations. People everywhere long for a Messiah. And, by a Messiah, men and women usually mean someone who will meet their own personal agendas and give them everything they happen to want. If anyone doubts me, just think how we are eager for every new government to bring down taxes, improve education and the health service, deliver a higher and higher standard of living, and all that must all cost us nothing! The folk of Jesus’ day knew exactly what they wanted. Jesus stands up in the Temple and, instead of giving people what they want to hear, He puts on His own lips the words of Isaiah, spoken some five hundred years previously. Now, as in the time of the Prophet, there is good news for everyone. There is to be no protected or privileged group. People everywhere are now to be free to be their true selves. If, by any chance, there were to be a group of people who are more favoured then others then Jesus repeats Isaiah’s words. It is the marginalised in society, those who have least, those who are captives, those who are sick; those are the people who are to have first claim on Jesus’ ministry. With the coming of Jesus it is potentially open house for everybody in God’s Kingdom.
Father Grant, your first responsibility as a priest is to stand in Jesus’ name, making your own that message of Isaiah, just as Jesus did, but with an added dimension. Jesus told his hearers that: Today in their midst this reading has come alive.
Here and now people can begin to enjoy the Kingdom of God because Jesus is present among them. You, Father Grant, are sent as Jesus’ minister, both to tell people of the presence of God’s Kingdom and to help them experience it. As long as you remember that you personally are not the Messiah but one sent in His name and totally dependent upon Him, then you will not let this awesome responsibility go to your head! The Spirit of the Lord is truly given to you this day and that should provide appropriate confidence for the task.
Remember, Father Grant, that if you are to bring people to God you must first do what Jesus does. S Paul tells us in our second reading today that Jesus, the Lord who ascends to glory is also the one who descended right down to the lower regions of the earth. Not for one moment are we saying that to be a priest in West Auckland is to be especially placed in the ‘lower regions of the earth’! S Paul is reminding us that Jesus is completely identified with this world He comes to save. Jesus is found time and time again in the Gospel story giving His friendship, His time, and His attention to those who are at the margins of life, both in terms of the class system and of the religious life of His day. The character we have come to know as the Good Samaritan is hardly one who would have been found in the front row of worshippers at the Temple; indeed, he would have been refused entry. Remember, though, that even within our own church congregations most of us carry, deep down, our shame, our sense of guilt, our feelings of inadequacy, our uncertainty about the Faith. We all long, too, for that one who will descend to us in the lowest parts of our being and then lift us, once again, upwards with Him into the security of God’s Kingdom If that is an uncomfortable place to be then every priest need remind himself, from time to time, that it is the uncomfortable place to which Jesus goes before us. The more we know something of the pain of the One who sees this world both as God intends it to be and also as what it has become, then and only then can you and I dare to talk about the priest as the one who is especially identified with Christ as the one who suffers specifically for others.
The tools for such a ministry, Father Grant, are those given you by Our Lord and Master. You are to preach and to teach as enjoined by Our Lord in tonight’s Gospel. Take that responsibility seriously. Remember, though, S Francis of Assisi’s profound advice about preaching Christ: Use words, if you must. What you are, Father Grant, what you are open to becoming, what you do and your motivation for your actions, will speak just as eloquently of Jesus as the message you rightly put into words.
Above all, be a faithful minister of the Sacraments. Jesus encounters people today as healer and as reconciler in the wonderful mysteries entrusted to you to preside over in His Church. When people long to know they are God’s children, it is the Sacrament of Baptism that will powerfully convey that truth; when people need healing or reconciliation they will need your special ministry. The men or women sick, in pain, depressed, may hear all the comforting words you and I can offer, but a tangible sign of God’s presence in anointing or in receiving absolution will speak to them far more powerfully than anything you or I could put into words. The Sacraments are visible guarantees of God reaching out to enable His Kingdom to break in on people’s lives. It will ever be both your duty and your joy to provide such a ministry to those entrusted to you.
Greatest of all duties and privileges, Father Grant, will be that of offering the Mass. In the Mass the one, full, perfect satisfaction for the sins of the whole world, Jesus Himself, is once more present with us, and for us, offering Himself to the Father and carrying all of us with Him in that offering. You will literally take the place of Christ every time you, as a priest, offer the Mass. Yes, such an experience may well be overwhelming for you and so it should be. Remember, though, that this ministry is entrusted to you so that others may know, at the deepest level, what it is for God to reach out to captives and to humanity, wounded in so many ways, yet lifted into the healing presence of God Himself. You are to offer the Mass also for a world which does not yet know God, for it is only Christ whose sacrifice will ultimately bring the world to the fulfilment of His purpose. The child has little if any understanding of the sacrifice made for him or her by parents and many others. Still, those sacrifices are made. There, perhaps, you and I have a glimpse of what it might mean that, in every Mass, Christ’s once-and-for-all offering is yet again present for all of us who, in this world at least, will never fully grasp the point. Offer Mass regularly and you will be drawing both yourself and the wider world more deeply into that mystery of God’s self-giving love.
Dare you do these things? Only because The Spirit of the Lord will be given to you. He will anoint you. So now it is to that giving of God’s Spirit in ordination that we will turn.