We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you For by your holy Cross You have redeemed the world.
Carissima famiglia, my dearest family. Welcome. Father Phong, welcome and congratulations on this night in which you and I celebrate the unmerited but wonderful gift of being called to the ministerial priesthood. You and I share with all who are here the common priesthood in Christ Jesus, and today Jesus shows us how to be a priest. And so we enter into the Holy Triduum of the Lord’s passion, death, and resurrection.
Have we celebrated this so often that it becomes routine? Well, we’re lucky because we have the gift of little children here who are ever interested in new discovery, and they meet the steps of the Lord, the voice of the Lord, the touch of the Lord in this solemn liturgy of these three days with interest and fascination. This gift of children opens our eyes to discover again that this is not an empty ritual for spectators. Jesus has invited us, each of us personally, to open our hearts and to be renewed in receiving his love.
Now, this love is no romantic sentiment or abstract idea. It is the Love that looks each of us in the eye and says, “I have longed to celebrate this Passover with you.” (Luke 22:15) It is the Love that falls at our feet and reaches out to wash and kiss them. It is the Love that at table offers its very life as food so that the sacrifice that is the essence of Love may be fed again and again to children who discover that they are beloved.
Over and over again, Jesus pours Himself out to us as a feast of food offered in the Holy Spirit of God in the Holy Catholic Church …offering himself as food … falling at our feet as servant. This is the way that He who, as St. Paul tells us, was “in the form of God, did not deem equality with God something to be grasped, but rather emptied himself”. Here is Love that pours itself out to the last drop, and the last drop lasts and lasts and lasts unto eternity. All of this for us.
Tonight, God falls at our feet. God, creator of all things, who cannot be contained by a vessel of a billion, billion galaxies, falls at our feet. What wondrous love is this?
Now, like Peter, our first impulse is to say, “You are God. You cannot humble yourself before me. I need you to be a powerful God to fulfill all of my hopes and dreams. I want to follow you as you realize your power.” Like the mother of James and John, we want to follow Jesus and ask that we sit with him in glory, the glory of the kingdom, and we want that to start right now. We do not want a God that can come to our feet.
What power would that be for me? And yet, here God is: Jesus, God the Son, at our feet, emptying himself, entrusting himself to the priestly ministry of men whose filthy, sinful hands he chooses to make his own. Emptying himself to feed us with his Body and Blood so that in our hands, on our tongue, at our feet, we might see the power that God pours out into us. It is the power of Love, eternal love, serving love, humble love, love that serves.
Would we not rather be served? Well, we want to be served. We want to be served love, because do we not want to be loved? The question that philosophers identify as the question that moves the human mind is, “Who am I?” I’m a philosopher, and I’ve learned that that is not the question that moves the hearts of most people, that motivates them. That question is, “Who loves me?” That’s the fundamental cry of our hearts. “Love me. Love me. Love me,” we cry. And there is Love at our feet, Love made flesh, Loving us. Because of this, we can serve. Loved first, we are able to love. Shown the way of love, the way of service, we know that our way of service is the way of love.
Oh, how our world needs such love. The world that rewards those who are loud in their demands, in insisting on their own way, who have grown deaf both to the cry of their hearts longing for love and deaf to the God who responds. Instead of being open to receive the gift of love, ours is a culture that feels entitled to such love. It presumes that it deserves to be loved. Each of us is told that we can demand the way in which we are to be named, loved, and served as if every meeting with another person was a drive-thru at McDonald’s.
What a sad world that is, because there’s no gift in that world, no possibility of being surprised, expecting everyone to be at our feet, expecting everyone to praise us when we find ourselves at their feet. When we do that, we miss the utter gift of God surprising us tonight and always at our feet.
This year, Pope Leo has named a holy year of Saint Francis of Assisi. This man who moved from an entitled wealthy life, looking in a worldly way for romantic love, he moved from that to living in utter poverty, the poverty of surrendering himself to be used by the One who fulfilled with utter gift his longing for love.
Francis realized and recognized that his poverty, his poverty – giving everything up, family and friends and wealth – his poverty was nothing compared to the poverty of Jesus. Francis served the poor because Jesus became poor, [He is] the God who gives Himself as food and who serves us on His knees. Jesus’s poverty is for Francis most clearly met in the Sacrament that tonight gives us the most Holy Eucharist. Though well aware that the hearts of too many of the priests of his time were shallow and self-serving, Francis was able to see the marvel of God loving us in the mess and mire that clings to our all too human feet.
We have been let down for a long time by thinking the “The Prayer of St. Francis” is actually Francis’ prayer. It is insipid, and it is not by Francis. It was written a hundred and twenty years ago by an Anglican. Francis [prayer] is deeper. His words ring with a truth that do not simply tickle our ears and make us feel warm, but brace us for the encounter, the encounter with a God of surprises who fills us with love.
Hear his words. This is from a letter that he wrote to his whole community the year he died, eight hundred years ago.
“Kissing your feet, therefore, and with all the love of which I am capable. I implore all of you brothers and sisters to show all possible reverence and honor to the most holy body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom that which is in heaven and on earth has been brought to peace and reconciled to Almighty God.
“Listen, my brothers”, he continues, “If the Blessed Virgin is honored, as is becoming, because she carried him in her most holy womb; if the Baptist trembled and did not dare to touch the holy head of God; if the tomb in which he lay for some time is held in veneration; how holy, just, and fitting must be the one who touches with his hands, receives in his heart and mouth, and offers to others to be received the One who is not about to die, but who is to conquer and be glorified, the One upon whom the angels long to gaze”.
Then [Francis] turns to his brothers who are priests. He himself never held himself worthy for that, only allowing himself to be ordained a deacon. But there were members in his community who became priests.
“See your dignity, priest brothers”. You and I are baptized brothers and sisters in the priesthood of Christ Jesus. “See your dignity, priest brothers, and be holy because he is holy. As the Lord God has honoured you above all others because of this ministry, for your part, love, revere, and honor Him above all others. It is a great misery and a miserable weakness that when you have Him present in this way, you are concerned about anything else in the whole world.
And he becomes a troubadour and sings this, the true prayer of St. Francis.
Let everyone be struck with fear.
Let the whole world tremble and let the heavens exult
when Christ, the Son of the living God,
is present on the altar in the hands of a priest.
O wonderful loftiness and stupendous dignity.
O sublime humility.
O humble sublimity.
The Lord of the universe, God and the Son of God,
so humbles Himself that for our salvation
He hides Himself under an ordinary piece of bread.
Brothers, [sisters], look at the humility of God and pour out your hearts before him.
Humble yourselves that you may be exalted by him.
Hold nothing back of yourselves for yourselves
that he who gives himself totally to you may receive you totally.
Let us be holy. Let us be saints.