Memorial of St. Barnabas-15th Anniversary of Ordination Mass
There’s a lot of focus on me today. Some may question celebrating an anniversary with others. After all, we’re celebrating doing what I am supposed to do: be a priest and continue with my commitment to those promises. And, in that sense, there’s not much noteworthy in doing what we’re supposed to do. Our Lord Himself tells his disciples: “When you have done all you have been commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.’” When we do what we say we will do, that should be normal, whether it’s the promise a priest makes at his ordination, the promise a couple makes to each other and to God when they get married, or the promise a Trooper makes when he or she takes the oath upon graduation from Trooper Recruit School.
But, lest we pack up and just go home, rather than enjoying a tasty dinner after Mass, there must be something more. Otherwise we’re just patting ourselves on the back. And I think the something more is that we rejoice at God providing for His Church. Christ promised His Apostles that He would not leave them orphaned; Christ promised His disciples that He would remain with them always, even to the end of the age, as they made disciples of all nations. And in celebrating St. Barnabas, “a good man, filled with the Holy Spirit and faith,” we celebrate God fulfilling His promise. And St. Barnabas took under his wing this guy named Saul, who, after his conversion, also went by the name Paul, and proclaimed the Gospel not only to Jews but also to non-Jews, Gentiles. “And a large number of people was added to the Lord.”
Throughout the centuries God remains active in His Church through the power of the Holy Spirit. God chooses people to continue His work, especially choosing certain men to share in His ministry, as we will hear in the preface of the Eucharistic Prayer tonight. Men like Ignatius of Antioch; Basil the Great; Martin of Tours; Dominic; Jordan of Saxony; Anthony of Padua; Thomas Aquinas; Pius V; Antoninus of Florence; Charles Borromeo; John Henry Cardinal Newman; Emil Kapaun; Solanus Casey; Vincent Capodanno; John Paul II; Benedict XVI; and many others who have made Christ Himself present by their preaching and their sacramental ministry and service to the poor. They didn’t just remind people about what Jesus did some 2,000 years ago, though they did that, too. They acted in His Name and with His power to bring people into relationship with God through Holy Baptism; to forgive their sins through Penance; to give a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit through Confirmation; to join a couple as a icon of the Trinity in Holy Matrimony; to anoint and heal through the Sacrament of the Sick; and especially to make Jesus’ Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity present in the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist through their sharing in Christ’s priestly ministry which they received in the Sacrament of Holy Order.
They did so as the person God made them, with all the ease and challenges that came with it. They did it in their time, adjusting, not the teaching, but the method of proclamation to the cultures in which they lived. They did so with joy at serving so loving a Father; they did so with tears knowing their own sinfulness and unworthiness to exercise so great an office. They were set apart, like Barnabas and Saul, for the work to which God called them. And we celebrate them today because they were faithful to that work and never gave up, even when it meant, for some, giving up their lives.
And so today, God reminds me that I’m not done yet, at least not today (we are never promised tomorrow). Today, you remind me that I have a high bar for which to strive. My name is not in that litany of saints that I just enumerated, but it’s supposed to be after I die, and it gives me something for which I can strive.
And your name is also supposed to be in the litany of saints, those holy men and women who, throughout the centuries, heard the Gospel and conformed their lives, whatever their vocation, to Jesus Christ, so that they could say with St. Paul, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” The good news for you, and the good news for me, is that Christ does the heavy lifting. His grace makes it all possible. All we have to do is cooperate, not get in the way, and let God do the brunt of the work.
Today is not about me. It’s about what God has done and what God wants to still accomplish through me, with me, and in me, not so much for me, but for the People He redeemed by the Death of His Son. Pray that I will continue to know that I am an unprofitable servant, doing only what I was obliged to do out of the love I have for Christ. Pray that I will help you to hear, even as I myself hope to hear, these words at the end of my life: “Well done, good and faithful servant….Come, share your master’s joy.”