CHRISM MASS
Holy Thursday 2014.
Many young people here have come from different parishes around the diocese to be with us for this Mass today. Some of you have already received Confirmation this year and others will be receiving Confirmation in a few weeks’ time. At Confirmation you will be anointed with the oil of Chrism. The Chrism that I will use in Confirmation and in the other sacraments will be blessed here at this Mass. That oil is also used in the ordination of priests. So today is a special day for us priests as well.
It’s special for us priests on the double because on this day we renew our commitment to our priesthood. We recall the day of our ordination when we received the grace of that sacrament and dedicated our lives to the service of God and of his people. We need this annual renewal of our promises the way a married couple needs to celebrate their wedding anniversary every year. Otherwise our love can grow cold, our service become routine and our whole priesthood can grow tired. We can fall into the temptation Pope Francis speaks of, namely “a defeatism which turns us into querulous and disillusioned ‘sourpuses’.”
This year, once again, we come together in the shadow of recent events in our diocese which have been a cause of pain and shame to us and to our people. Despite the heaviness in our hearts and despite the many reasons we could find to be discouraged, we do not succumb to pessimism and despair. We look rather at the reasons for hope.
Pope Francis has given many reasons to hope. Almost everything he had said and done since the day he was elected just over a year ago has been a sign of hope, an encouragement to all of us to embrace once again the challenge of being a follower of Christ and witnessing to his message in our lives. From the moment he appeared on the balcony of St Peter’s after he was elected, Christian joy has been a central theme of the Pope’s ministry. He radiates that joy in his own person. His broad smile, his sense of humour and his no-nonsense approach to things are well known to us all at this stage. The joy he speaks about and that he radiates is not a superficial, happy clappy pleasure. It is rooted in the Gospel, the message of Jesus. It comes from a close relationship with Christ nourished by prayer and the sacraments.
It was no surprise when the title and theme of his first major document was “The Joy of the Gospel”. It opens with the inspiring words:
The joy of the Gospel fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus. Those who accept his offer of salvation are set free from sin, sorrow, inner emptiness and loneliness. With Christ joy is constantly born anew.
He invites everyone to experience this joy by entering into a relationship with Jesus and to share their joy with those around them. For him, this is the meaning of the new evangelization. It means spreading the Good News of Christ by witnessing to it in joy-filled lives. This is a task for all the followers of Jesus, not just priests and Religious.
Each Christian and every community must discern the path that the Lord points out, but all of us are asked to obey his call to go forth from our own comfort zone in order to reach all the ‘peripheries’ in need of the light of the Gospel.
Pope Francis challenges us priests and bishops to be joyful messengers of the Good News and he does so with a sense of wry humour. Speaking about the importance of preaching and of the homily he says: “We all know that the faithful attach great importance to it, and that both they and their ordained ministers suffer because of homilies: the laity from having to listen to them and the clergy from having to preach them!” He exhorts us priests to “renew our confidence in preaching, based on the conviction that it is God who seeks to reach out to others through the preacher, and that he displays his power through human words.”
He stresses the importance of preaching Good News, not Bad News. He reminds us that some truths are more important than others and that we must give priority to the great saving truths of our faith, for example, the greatness of God and his love and compassion, the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church and the world, the wonderful mysteries of the Incarnation and Redemption in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. He is a firm believer in the old maxim that you’ll attract more people with a spoonful of honey than a bucket of vinegar.
Perhaps most important of all, Francis gives us good reasons for confidence in our ministry and our preaching. That confidence is based on two things, he says: Firstly, the Spirit of God is working in all people and gives them an expectation, even if it is an unconscious one, of knowing the truth about God, about human beings, and about how we are to be set free from sin and death. In other words, there’s a hunger in people to hear the Gospel, even if they are not aware of it.
And secondly, we have a great message. We have a message that fulfils that expectation and feeds that hunger:
We have a treasure of life and love which cannot deceive, and a message which cannot mislead or disappoint…It is a truth which is never out of date because it reaches that part of us which nothing else can reach. Our infinite sadness can only be cured by an infinite love.
The Pope goes on immediately to say: “But this conviction has to be sustained by our own constantly renewed experience of savouring Christ’s friendship and his message.” And that is precisely why we are here today and what the Renewal of Priestly Promises that takes place now is about. The two questions I will now put to all the priests are about just that: “renewing our experience of savouring Christ’s friendship and his message.” May this renewal bear abundant fruit in our ministries in the year ahead and every year of our lives.
