Tag: Ordinary Time

Good morning.
This is a very surreal moment for me. Standing up here as an ordained priest for the first time.
In the church that I grew up in.
The church that formed me.
I started serving Mass here when I was about eight years old. Back then I was so short that I had
to balance the book on my head so the priest could read from it.
And from there, I just sort of never stopped. (not sure about this line)
I served here for many years. Eventually I trained other servers. I helped with religious education
and, somehow, ended up teaching RCIA for teens while I was still a teenager myself.
I have climbed all over this church building. Setting up, decorating, cleaning, or simply just
exploring places I probably wasn’t supposed to be.
And, like any good altar server, I learned how to play with fire.
Candles. Charcoal. Incense.
In fact, I can still tell you the story behind some of the burn marks in the carpet.
I have a lot of good memories in this Church.
But looking back now, I can see just how much this Parish helped form me.
I grew up playing with fire in this church.
And somewhere along the way, this community was tending another fire in me.
“You duped me O Lord and I let myself be duped.”
These words of Jeremiah, I think, are quite fitting for a newly ordained priest returning home.
Not that I was duped into the priesthood,
But did I question along the way, “How did I end up here?”
And I think that is the same thing that Jeremiah is wrestling with.
He had answered God’s call. And that call had taken him places he never expected to go.
And yet he describes the experience as, “a fire burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones.”

The fire had taken hold of him.
That fire that I played with here took hold of me too.
God was at work long before I understood what he was doing.
Long before I ever played with fire, I was baptized with water.
And Rileah, the same is true for you.
The fire being kindled in you was first lit in the waters of baptism.
And today, as you are received into full communion, the Church recognizes and celebrates what
God has already been doing in you.
In a few moments, you will be sealed with the Gift of the Holy Spirit, and for the first time come
to this altar to receive Christ in the Eucharist.
There is a lot to celebrate here today.
An ordination.
Rileah being received into full communion.
But what we are celebrating in both is something God has been doing for a very long time.
A fire first lit in the waters of Baptism.
This fire wasn’t lit to leave us where we are. It was lit so that we could follow.
“Whoever wishes to come after me… follow me.”
Follow me.
I had no idea where being an altar server at eight years old would take me.
Jeremiah didn’t expect where God’s call would take him.
But the fire keeps drawing us forward.
None of us tends our fire alone.
I know that because this community tended that fire in me.
Some of you saw it long before I did.

You encouraged it. You gave me opportunities to serve, to learn, and to grow.
You tended the fire.
And Rileah the same has been true for you.
Through your relationship with Rob, through family and friends, there have been people tending
the fire in you too.
None of us tends the fire alone.
And that is what I hope this parish continues to be:
A community that tends the fire in one another.
There may be another eight-year-old altar server here today who has no idea where following
Christ will lead them.
Tend the fire.
There may be someone trying to discern marriage, religious life, or priesthood.
Tend the fire.
And there may be someone who has been following Christ for sixty or seventy years and is
discovering that God is still leading them somewhere new.
Tend the fire.
Because God is never finished with us.
The fire begin with God.
First kindled in the waters of Baptism.
And throughout our lives, they keep drawing us toward Christ, who continues to call:
“Follow me.”
And in a few moments, that call brings us here.
To this altar.
In a few moments, Rileah, you will come here to receive Christ in the Eucharist for the first time.
And I will stand here now as a priest, in the church I grew up in.

Two very different journeys that have brought us to the same place.
To Christ.
And that’s true for all of us.
None of us follows the same path.
But none of us follows alone.
We bring one another to Christ.
That’s what this community has done for me.
That’s what so many have done for you, Rileah.
And that’s what we are called to keep doing for one another.
There is still fire burning in this parish.
Notice it.
Encourage it.
Tend the fire.

For the past several months,
people have been asking me one question more than almost any other:
“Are you ready?”
Are you ready to be ordained?
Are you ready to be a priest?

And frankly…
I never had a good answer.
On Friday, in a certain sense,
The Church finally answered that question.
During the Rite of Ordination,
after Maikel and I were called forward,
the bishop asked whether we had been judged worthy.
And the answer was given:
“After inquiry among the Christian people and upon
recommendation of those responsible, I testify that they have been
found worthy.”
We were declared ready.
Or at least…
ready enough.

But standing here this morning, celebrating Mass for the first time as a
priest,
I can see that “Are you ready?” really isn’t the right question.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus questions his disciples.
“Who do PEOPLE say that the Son of Man is?”
It’s an easy question.
And the disciples have answers.
John the Baptist.
Elijah.
Jeremiah.
One of the prophets.

It’s easy because they are simply reporting what other people think.

We could do that too.
We could tell Jesus what the Church teaches about him,
what we learned growing up,
what our parents or grandparents taught us.
We could recite the Creed.
All good answers.
But then Jesus makes the question personal:
“But who do YOU say that I am?”
This is a much harder question.
Because now I cannot hide behind another’s answer.
I must give a personal answer.
And my answer has consequences on how I live.
If Jesus is simply a wise teacher,
I can listen to the things I find helpful
and ignore the rest.

But if Peter is right, if this really is the Christ, the Son of the living God
then I cannot simply admire him from a distance.
I have to decide whether I will trust him.
Whether I will follow him.
Whether I will allow knowing him to change the way I live.

Jesus’ question asks something of us.
Throughout his life, Saint Francis of Assisi kept returning to two questions:

“Who are you, O Lord? And who am I?”

Who are you?
And who am I?
We often try to answer these questions in reverse.
We start with ourselves.
Who am I?
What am I supposed to do with my life?
What is my vocation?
What kind of person am I supposed to become?
Am I ready?

I have certainly spent a lot of time on those questions lately.
But Francis begins somewhere else:
Who are you, Lord?
He does not begin with himself,
but outside, with God.
Simon declares:
“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
And only then is he given a name,
a vocation,
a place within what Christ is doing:

“You are Peter.”
First, Peter discovers something about Christ.
And in that encounter, Peter discovers something about himself.
We try so hard to figure ourselves out
to determine exactly who we are
and what we are supposed to become.
But the Christian answer to “Who am I?”
begins outside of myself.
It begins by turning toward Christ.
Who are you, Lord?
Who is the One calling me?
Who is the One I am trying to follow?

Because the more deeply I know him,
The more clearly I can understand who I am in relation to him.
Peter is a great example of this.
And he shows us that this doesn’t happen all at once.
He gives a beautiful answer today.
Jesus praises him for it.
And then…
almost immediately…
Peter demonstrates that he doesn’t really understand what he has just said.

In the very next passage,
Jesus begins to explain that he must go to Jerusalem,
suffer,
be killed,
and be raised.

Peter objects.
That CANNOT be what the Messiah looks like.
Peter recognizes Christ,
but he still has to learn what following this Jesus will mean.
And that will take the rest of his life.
He will misunderstand.
He will fail.
He will deny Jesus.

And still…
Christ will call him back.
After the Resurrection,
Christ will meet the man who denied him three times
and ask him three times:
“Do you love me?”
And Peter will keep following.
Eventually, the man who once recoiled from the idea of a suffering Messiah
will give his own life for Christ.
His confession at Caesarea Philippi was not the end of his answer.
It was the beginning of a lifetime spent growing into what he had
confessed.
And, I think, that is where today’s Gospel meets us.
Most of us know what we are supposed to say about Jesus.
The challenge is spending a lifetime allowing those words to become
true in us.
We say that Jesus is Lord
and then spend our lives learning to trust him with the parts of our
lives
we would rather control ourselves.

We say that he is merciful
and then have to believe that his mercy is actually great enough for
our sins,
and learn to extend that mercy to someone else.
We say that his way is the way to life
and then have to follow it when his way becomes difficult.
Our answer deepens as we live it.
And sometimes we discover that we did not understand our own answer
nearly as well as we thought we did.
Peter certainly didn’t.
And neither did Francis.
And neither do I.

The ordination on Friday did not mean that I finally figured out who Christ
is, or even exactly what it means for me to be a priest.
Rather, it gives me a new way of asking the question.
And today, for the first time as a priest, I get to bring that question here:
to the altar.
Who are you, Lord?
And here Christ answers us not simply with words, but with himself.
“This is my Body, which will be given up for you.”
Here we discover what kind of Christ Peter has confessed.
The One who gives himself.
The One whose authority takes the form of service.
The One whose power is revealed in love.
The One who lays down his life for his friends.
The One who gives himself to us as food.

If this is who you are, Lord
Then who are you calling me to become?
If that is who you are, then “who am I?”
That question is certainly before me today.
If Christ gives himself for his people,
then what kind of priest am I called to become?
But the question does not stop with the priest standing at the altar.
It belongs to everyone who approaches this altar.
Because Christ gives himself to all of us.
We do not receive the Eucharist simply so that Christ can remain safely
within us.
We receive him so that our lives can begin to take the shape of the
One we receive.
If he gives himself, we learn to give ourselves.
If he serves, we learn to serve.
If he loves, we learn to love.

And slowly…
imperfectly…
over the course of a lifetime…
our lives begin to answer the question too.

Maybe that is why I still don’t have a perfect answer when someone asks me:
“Are you ready?”
The Church has judged me ready to begin.
But I am not finished becoming the priest Christ has called me to be.
And none of us is finished becoming the person Christ has called us to be.
Peter wasn’t ready because he understood everything.
He was ready because he saw something in Christ,
and he was willing to keep following.
To keep discovering.
To keep allowing Christ to change him.

And perhaps that is enough for us too.
So instead of beginning with ourselves
Who am I?
What am I supposed to become?
Am I ready?
Francis invites us to begin somewhere else.
Who are you, Lord?
And Jesus turns the question back toward us:
“Who do you say that I am?”
Peter answered:
“You are the Christ.”
And then he spent the rest of his life learning what those words meant.
In a few moments, we will come to this altar.
Christ will show us again what they mean.
“This is my Body, given for you.”
This is who I am.
And then we will receive him,
so that we can become more like the One we receive.

Because eventually…
we will have to answer the question,
“Who do you say that I am?”
with our lives.