Jubiliarians Mass, 20 June 2023

Our Readings offer us three points for our reflection today as we greet the priests whose jubilee anniversaries occur at this time.

Generosity. St. Paul reminds us how generous Jesus was. He who was the Son of God became one of us so thtat we might share in his life. He who was rich made himself poor so that we might be rich in the many graces that come from God. The men whose anniversaries we celebrate themselves have been generous. At a certain point in their youth, they made a choice to offer their lives to God. It was a generous act, giving of the best of their lives at the service of God and neighbour. Elsewhere St. Paul writes that God loves a cheerful giver. They have given cheerfully and over the years offered themselves to God and then to us.

A second point is prayer. Pope Francis often reminds us that a priest’s first duty is prayer. A priest is a man of prayer, both personal and communitarian. He had taken on a public commitment to praying the Liturgy of the Hours, joining the chorus of the Church, the Spouse of Christ, at prayer every day, offering God praise and thanksgiving but also petition and intercession. A priest leads people in prayer, especially the greatest of prayers, the Mass. A priest joins people spontaneously in prayer at moments of grief, tragedy and suffering. A priest cultivates personal prayer in meditation, aspirations and visits to the Blessed Sacrament. Yes, a priest is a man of prayer and it is good to recall it is a primary duty. It’s why people so often ask priests to remember them in prayer, say a prayer for them. In being a man of prayer, a priest to be a cyper of the eternal in the midst of the community. His life should point to God. I recall someone who saw Pope John Paul after celebrating Mass going into an oratory and dropping to his knees in prayer. She commented: “he was immersed in the eternal”.

A third word is perfection. Priests are to be perfect as their heavenly Father is perfect. But straightaway we know priests are far from perfect. And the first to know this are priests themselves. So what does Jesus mean? It certainly isn’t perfectionism, some kind of freak who likes to have everything perfectly in order, neat and tidy all the time. That’s not what Jesus is getting at. What he has in mind is striving every day to be love his neighbour recognised the big-heartedness of God who causes the sun to shine on bad men as well as good. Life’s journey is about expanding our hearts to the measure of Jesus’ heart and Jesus is always looking towards God the Father whose love is boundless. So to be perfect means growing day by day in this love which includes love of enemy. It’s obvious that a priest exercising ministry will come across all kinds of people in all kinds of situations. Tensions, crises, oppositions, betrayals, are all part of life. It isn’t always plain sailing. Though we want, like Moses approaching the flaming bush, to approach each neighbour as a sacred encounter, from time to time we find ourselves embroiled in difficulties. But here is precisely the time we grow in following the calling of priesthood. Every day becomes an occasion to improve a little more in love of God and neighbour. And it brings into play all the virtues but especially the virtue of love that is the mother of virtues, the love that strives for unity, harmony. As Saint Gregory the Great writes: “the worth of the virtue of concord is shown by the fact that without it, the other virtues have no value whatsoever”. On this ordinary anniversary, we receive the invitation to keep going in generosity, prayer and striving for the perfection that comes from God.

A final word. One of the jubilarians wrote to me recently quoting a comment an American politician had made on suffering a set back in his political life. Perhaps it expresses something of the attitude of the priests whose anniversaries we are marking today, an attitude they have kept alive in generosity, in prayer and in the resilience of persevering every day, in striving towards perfection in the course of their life and ministry: the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.