First Mass Homily - “Priesthood and Surrender” - 06.26.22 (13th Sunday OT- C)
“Priesthood and Surrender”
By: Fr. David Schmidt
All Saints Parish - St. Conrad Church - Butler, PA
Mass Readings - https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/062622.cfm
One of the moments during my time seminary that had a profound impact on my journey to the priesthood was during the end of my first year of seminary. I remember praying in the chapel and I was noticing how everything that God had been showing me up to that point had nothing to do with my vocation, but about His Love for me. And I felt Him strongly saying to my heart, “Yeah, it’s all about me. It’s about my love for you.”
This impacted me greatly because instead of obsessing so much over my vocation and what God was calling me too, I shifted my focus to focusing on falling in love with Him. Trusting that He would reveal my vocation to me along the way.
Everything that God does in our lives is about Him revealing His love to us. Nothing else. He desires that His love be known by all His children all throughout the world.
There are many ways in which God reveals His love to us. One specific way that He reveals His love to the world is through the gift of the priesthood. St. John Vianney, a French saint from the 17 and 1800s and the patron saint of parish priests once said about the priesthood- “The priest continues the work of redemption on earth…if we really understood the priest on earth, we would die not of fright but of love…The Priesthood is the love of the heart of Jesus.”
This is a powerful claim by John Vianney saying that ‘the Priesthood is the love of the heart of Jesus.” The reason why he is able to say this is because of the role that the priesthood plays in God’s plan for our salvation.
There is nothing more that God desires than for us to be with Him in heaven forever. He desires this so much that He was willing to die on the Cross to save us from our sins. Through the Cross, Christ defeated sin and death. Through the Cross, Christ won the war. However, although the war has been won, there are still many battles to be fought.
Each soul represents a unique battle between heaven and hell. God desires our eternal salvation, and the devil desires our eternal damnation. The devil knows he has lost the war, but he’s trying to drag as many souls with him as possible into the fires of hell before the Second Coming of Christ.
Christ knows our great need for His graces to fight this battle. He knows we can’t do this on our own because we are too weak and sinful. This is why out of His infinite love for us, He calls men to the priesthood in order to bring His graces into the world through the Sacraments. As St. John Vianney says, “The priest continues the work of redemption on earth.”
The priest offers his life to bring God’s love and salvation to the world. We can’t get to heaven without our priests because it is through the priest that we receive the greatest gift God could ever give us- the Holy Eucharist.
At every Mass, we return to Calvary to the foot of the Cross. We don’t re-sacrifice Jesus over and over again at every Mass, but instead share in the one sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the Cross at Calvary. It is the graces of healing and redemption from His Cross and Resurrection that we share in every time we go to Mass and receive the Holy Eucharist.
At Calvary, Christ gave all of Himself to us. There was not a single ounce of Himself that He didn’t give to us. In the Eucharist, we receive His Body and Blood that He poured out for us from the Cross.
This is why St. John Vianney says that “if we really understood the priest on earth, we would die not of fright but of love.” We would die of love because the infinite love of God that is revealed through His priesthood would be too overwhelming for us finite creatures to handle. If we knew what was truly at stake regarding the salvation of our souls, and the role the priest plays in bringing to us God’s salvation, it would be too incredible for us to conceive.
This is why St. John Vianney can say, “The Priesthood is the love of the heart of Jesus.” Priests are meant to be powerful vessels of God’s love and mercy in the world. Even more so, the priest is “in persona Christi” which means in the person of Christ. In the priest we are meant to see Jesus. Everyone is called to be Jesus in their lives as we are His Body and we each reflect Him in our own unique way. But the priest is called to be Christ in a unique and radical way. The hope for every priest is that when a person encounters them, it’s not, “I encountered Fr. So and so today.” But instead, “I encountered Christ today.” The hope is that each priest is a powerful vessel of God’s love in the world, so that people may have a physical and tangible experience of the love of the heart of Jesus.
This is why it is so damaging when a priest fails to live “in persona Christi.” We’ve seen the pain and suffering that this causes the people of God when Christ’s priests fail to live up to this high calling to be Christ in the world. The devil knows just how important priests are to our eternal salvation, and he knows that in order to destroy the Church, he needs to destroy the priesthood because when the shepherd is struck down, the sheep scatter, and the wolves come in and kill the sheep.
However, even though there are some priests throughout the universal Church who have not been good images of Christ to the world. There are a great number of good and holy priests who faithfully continue Christ’s work of redemption on earth. Priests who are powerful vessels of God’s love. Priests who everyday fight on the front lines of this battle for souls against the enemy. Priests who are courageous shepherds willing to lay down their lives for their flock to protect them from the wolves that seek to destroy them.
We need to give thanks and praise to God for these good and holy priests who have been such a blessing to the Church, especially to our Church here in Pittsburgh. Many of whom are here today.
There have been many priests in my own journey who have played such an incredible role in helping me to encounter God’s love and mercy in a way I never knew was possible. I am eternally grateful to each of these priests, and I pray that I can make the same impact on others as they have made on me.
One of the things that I have learned from the witness of the many holy priests is that the love of Christ is worth giving up everything for. We see this in a powerful way in our readings from today.
In the first reading we have the call of Elisha by the prophet Elijah, where Elisha leaves everything to follow Elijah. Then in the Gospels, Jesus is calling some of the disciples to leave everything and follow Him. When Jesus calls the disciples, it takes on a more radical nature than what Elijah called Elisha too. When Elijah called Elisha, Elisha pleaded to Elijah to allow him to go back and kiss his father and mother goodbye before following him, which Elijah permitted. However, in the Gospels when these disciples make the same plea by saying “I will follow you Lord, but first let me say farewell to my family at home” and “Lord, let me go first and bury my father.” Jesus responds saying, “Let the dead bury their dead. But you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God” and “No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God.”
When we first read this it sounds like Jesus is being harsh to His disciples who seem to be making a reasonable request. However, Jesus doesn’t allow them to go and say goodbye to their family, not because He is harsh or doesn’t value the family. He doesn’t allow them to say goodbye because the proclamation of the Kingdom of God to all the world is so important and so urgent that it takes priority over everything in this life even our family, friends, and loved ones because it deals with our eternal salvation. When called, we must put our hand to the plow and not look back at what we are leaving behind. If we look back, then we are putting the world ahead of the Kingdom of God, thus making ourselves unfit for His Kingdom.
What is revealed in this Gospel reading is that Christ wants everything. He is calling us to give Him everything. To follow Him with our whole hearts and not too look back at the former life we are leaving behind. We can’t let anything get in the way of following Christ with our whole hearts. Christ needs to be everything in our lives. This isn’t just for those called to priesthood and religious life, but it’s for all of us. This is what it means to be Christian. It’s going to look differently in whatever state of life we are called too, but the calling is the same- to give Christ everything.
We need to ask ourselves today, “Am I giving all of myself to God or not? Am I making time for prayer everyday? Am I doing everything I can to lead my spouse and kids to Jesus? Am I going to Mass on Sundays? Do I love Jesus above everything? Am I giving God the best of my time and resources or am I just giving Him my scraps? Do I seek out His mercy and forgiveness for my sins and truly try to turn from my sinful ways, or do I continue to live the life I want to live intentionally ignoring God’s Commandments?”
As I mentioned before, we are in a battle. There is a fierce battle going on for each of our souls and we see this playing out with everything going on in our world today. And there is only one way to fight this battle – we fight by surrendering. Surrendering not to the enemy but surrendering to the love of God. Surrendering our will to His will. Surrendering our hearts to His Most Sacred Heart. Surrendering all of ourselves to Jesus Christ who has surrendered Himself completely to us on the Cross.
St. Teresa of Avila, one of the great Carmelite saints from the 16th century, wrote in one of her poems titled “I have surrendered and given my all” saying:
“I have surrendered and given my all,
and the trade I have made is such
that my Beloved is all for me,
and I am all for my Beloved.”
We waste so much of our lives going to the things of this world to satisfy that deep ache in our hearts for love. It is only the love of Christ, the love of the Beloved that will satisfy us. It’s a love worth surrendering everything for.
The love of the Beloved is the type of love that so overwhelms us that it brings us to our knees. It forces us to surrender. Not surrender in loss. But surrender in victory, knowing that this love is what we have been searching for and fighting for our whole lives.
If we only knew how incredible this love is. If we only knew how much we are infinitely loved. If we only knew then we would do everything possible to turn from our sinful ways and surrender completely to this love.
God is building an army. He is building an army of men and women who are willing to surrender themselves completely to His love no matter what state of life they are in. Let us join God’s army by surrendering our hearts to His love. We surrender by running as fast as possible into the arms of our Beloved. Don’t slow down. Don’t look back. But run as fast as possible into His arms. It is in His arms that we find all that we are desiring in this life. Nothing else will satisfy us. Everything good in this life is meant to point us to Him. If anything is slowing us down or causing us to look backwards, we need to get rid of it immediately so we are not delayed or prevented from reaching our eternal destiny.
This love is worth surrendering everything for. Surrendering to this love is the only way we will bring about renewal in the Church. Surrendering to this love is the only way we will win this fierce spiritual battle that is manifesting itself in our world today and in the depths of our souls.
So, my brothers and sisters in Christ. My sons and daughters. It is time. Come. Let us join God’s army. And let us go. Let us fight. Let us win. Let us surrender.
