Maundy Thursday

March 20, 2008

Homily for the Anglican Usage Mass

of the

St. Thomas More Society

celebrated at

St. Anthony of Padua Roman Catholic Church , 1013 Wood Street

Scranton, PA

John 13:1-15

            In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.  Amen

            As I think back on my conversion journey, on the path I walked from Anglicanism to Catholicism, the way is marked by the different priests I have known and for whom I have deep affection.  There is Father Vincent York, the man who brought to me a free copy of the Pope’s encyclical, The Splendor of Truth.  There is Msgr. Joe Quinn, who first invited me to become a Catholic.  There is Msgr. William Feldcamp, who took us into St. Clare Church and stood up for us when detractors treated us shamefully.  There is Fr. Charles Connor, who, despite his demanding schedule, found two Sundays each month for ten months to catechize us and teach us the beauty of the Catholic faith.  And, of course, there are Fr. Frank Skitzki and Fr. Ed Scott, who loved us and our mission so much that when we went on pilgrimage to Rome, they came along.

            Today is Maundy Thursday, the traditional day of the Church year to preach on vocations to the priesthood, for it was on this night that Jesus instituted the ministerial priesthood.  Not only do we celebrate the institution of the Eucharist, we give thanks that the Lord gave to us the priesthood, by which we continue to celebrate the Eucharist today.

            I talked to you about the many good priests I have known—and there are many more that I did not mention—because what is true for me is true also for you.  As you reflect back on your life as a Catholic, on your time in the Church actively involved in the mission to build up the Kingdom of God, I am certain that your journey also is marked by men of profound generosity and constant sacrifice who have answered the Lord’s call to serve the world as priests of the Church.

            I want to encourage these memories of your own experiences because I am certain of one more thing:  the priests who are willing to follow Jesus all the way to the grave, who are more akin to Jesus, far outnumber the priests who are more akin to Judas.  That is, even if you know a Judas and had a bad experience with him, you likely have had innumerable occasions wherein, through the ministry of a priest, you were drawn closer to God.

            Judas is not representative of how most Catholics view the priesthood.  If a person is in general suspicious of priests, cynical about the moral life of priests, trumpeting the abuse he suffered at the hands of priests, he is most likely a person outside the Church.  Like Judas, he has no love for the Church and can hardly see beyond his own agenda and anger.

            Catholics, on the other hand, love and honor the men that have been enduring examples to them of what it means to love God and man.  They know and have seen the priests who humbly wash the feet of those they are called to serve.  They have been exposed to the men who pour their very lives out for the faithful and the not-so-faithful, alike.  Spending just a little bit of time in the Church, one cannot help but notice what wonderful men so many of the clergy are.  They truly re-present Jesus to us.

            Therefore, we must guard against adopting the outsider’s view of the priesthood.  We must guard against the suspicious disobedience and outright vitriol directed at the priesthood by those in the secular media, academia, the halls of Congress and elsewhere where not nearly enough faithful Catholics are to be found.  And more than just guarding against adopting this orientation, we must challenge it when we run across those who would happily run over the first priest they could.

            Tell others, especially those outside the Church, of the many kindnesses extended to you by priests of the Church.  Tell them that the eleven disciples willing to lay down their lives for Jesus far outnumber the one who destroyed himself after he tried to destroy Jesus.  Be a witness to the truth that your priest, on a daily basis, teaches you how to be a faithful Christian and how grateful you are that he also dispenses the means of grace that enable you to be faithful.  Tell them how grateful you are for the Mass your priest celebrates.

            We see that on this, the night of the Last Supper, that all the disciples received the Eucharist.  And though all of them ran away, for all of them were weak, one man’s sin was greater than the rest.  All twelve denied Jesus, but only Judas betrayed Him.  The eleven later recognized that the celebration of the Eucharist is their participation in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  And every good priest who has ever lived has integrated the truth about the Eucharist with the way he lives his life.  We must die to self in order to live.

            The bad priests, on the other hand, do not make this connection.  They go through the motions well enough, sometimes quite elegantly, but when it comes down to it, they are happier to see you wash their feet than they are to even consider washing yours.  They would sooner see you die than die to self.  And, like Judas, their self-destructive ways lead to self-destruction.  They crash and burn before all the world to see; so everyone knows their exploits and their end.

            The faithful priest, however, labors in relative anonymity.  His good deeds go unnoticed and unreported.  Yet you know about them and so do your loved ones.  Yet you remain silent about your priest’s great virtue as outsiders malign and insult the priesthood.

            Last year, the Diocese of Scranton sent no man to seminary.  In eight years there will be no men ordained at the Cathedral downtown.  So far this year, no men have been accepted.  This is a travesty.  If so many of us love and honor the priests we know, why do more men not desire to answer our Lord’s summons to this august calling?

            I believe that part of the answer to this question is that we do not do enough to challenge those who would demean the priesthood.  We do not talk enough about how much we need and appreciate the priests we have; we do not reflect in our own lives the sacrifices the priest live out, the sacrifices the priests offer up each day at Mass.

            If we are to reverse in this Diocese the vocation crisis we are now experiencing, stories about the good priests must outnumber the sordid tales we all know about Judas and his ilk.  Stories of self-sacrifice must be more common than stories of self-destruction.  And those of us in the Church are just the ones to tell them.