5th Sunday of Easter A

I would like to say something today I have never said before, although I should warn you in advance not to get too excited about it. I’ve always been aware of it over the years but have been very reluctant to mention it. And it’s to do with the Second Vatican Councils’s Constitution on the Liturgy, one of the most important documents to emerge from the Council, and the one which had the most immediate and visible impact in that it changed for ever the way we celebrate Mass.

In it, the Council Fathers speak of the different ways in which the Risen Jesus is present among us when we gather here on a Sunday. He is present among us in our coming together as a community – wherever two are three are gathered in my name I am there in the midst of them. He is present in the Word which is alive and active with power, the letter to the Hebrews tells us, to read our most secret emotions and thoughts. And he is present in a very particular way in the Eucharist under the appearances of bread and wine, what we call the Real Presence, even although, as the Council is at pains to point out, the others are real too. But the document lists one other way in which the Risen Jesus is present among us at Mass and that’s the one I never speak about. I almost feel afraid to do so in case it sounds arrogant or presumptious, but what the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy says is that, as well as in the community, in the Word and in the Eucharist, the Risen Jesus is also present in the person of the ordained priest:…me! So why, after twenty three years of avoiding it every time the subject has come up, am I saying it to you today? Well, its because of what St Peter says in the second reading. Speaking to us through those first century Christians he says to you today: ‘You are a chosen people. A royal priesthood, a consecrated nation, a people set apart to sing the praises of God who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light,’ words that could be as easily interpreted as arrogant or presumptious as the ones I have avoided for so long. So how are we to understand them in a way which avoids this danger and opens us up to their rich meaning?

Well, the key lies in the Greek word, karisma, which means a divinely given gift. The important thing about such gifts or charisms is that they are given to individuals for the good of others, the classic example of this being the gift of prophecy in the Old Testament. More often than not it was a gift which brought nothing but trouble to the individual who received it, called, as he was, to proclaim to the people a message they usually didn’t want to hear. And while its not always as bad as that – although it can be - there is always an element of it in any charism. Basically a charism is a gift from God which carries with it very serious responsibilities and it is in that context that we have to understand the fact that all of us here – myself through ordination and the rest of you through baptism – share in the priesthood of Jesus. We are, whether we have understood it yet or not, all those amazing things the second reading speaks of. We really are a royal priesthood, a consecrated nation, a people set apart.
And essentially this means that what I am called to do as an ordained priest within the parish community you are called to do in and for the world. As we gather each week, I exercise what is called ministerial priesthood by offering in Jesus’ name and on your behalf, the great sacrifice of thanksgiving which is the Eucharist. But you are not mere spectators at this sacrifice. As a priestly people you also offer the sacrifice. And you do so on behalf of all the people in the streets and houses around us, some of whom know nothing of God. And so, until they do, until the day comes when we are all able to do this together, you praise God on their behalf, you thank God on their behalf, you bring their needs before God in the same way that I do for you each day. But you do this, not only on behalf of people, but on behalf of creation, the whole cosmos, everything that exists. That’s what it means to celebrate Eucharist….Boring indeed!

But there’s even more to it than that. We are also a people of the Word. Given what we heard today in the first reading about the Apostles appointing deacons to hand out food so that they themselves could get on with preaching the Word, it is perhaps not surprising that the Council should identify the preaching of the Word as the primary duty of the ordained priest, putting it before even the celebration of the Eucharist. And so, as your parish priest, I have a very serious obligation to prepare a homily each week. I am almost afraid to say it, but the homily at Mass, designed to open up the Word and make it relevant to daily life, is not fundamentally a speech or a lecture to be agreed or disagreed with. To the extent that it is Spirit-filled, it becomes part of the Word and a congregation’s first response, despite the inevitably flawed nature of the priest himself, has to be to listen in faith.

But, as a priestly people, you are not just listeners, not just receivers of the Word. You are also called to be bearers of it to others. And as lay men and women you exercise this aspect of your baptismal priesthood, not by giving homilies, but by engaging with people. For St Ignatius the basis of all ministry was what he called ‘spiritual conversation.’ He sent his followers out into the world to meet people, talk with them, listen to them and, only when appropriate, when they raised the subject, speak to them about the things of God and help them make sense of their lives by shining the light of faith on their experience. And we can only do this if we ourselves have been shaped and formed over the years by exposure to the Word. Any priest, ordained or otherwise, who is not steeped the Word of God, is simply not fit for purpose a sobering thought for all of us.

And yet if only we believed. If we did, Jesus tells us today, we would, through the power of the Spirit, perform even great works than he did. Can you imagine it?


BIDDING PRAYERS


In today’s reading from the acts of the Apostles we hear how the first deacons came to be appointed. They were called to the ministry of service in the community and in our own day we are seeing a return to this ideal. Already several mature, married men in the diocese are preparing to be ordained deacons and we ask God to guide them on their journey and raise up many more in our midst who will undertake this ancient ministry within the Church……………………….Lord hear us

In that same reading from Acts we heard how important it was for the Apostles to devote themselves to prayer and the service of the word. And so we pray for ordained priests throughout the diocese today that they, too, will be men committed to prayer and the service of the word. We pray that the word will be preached and proclaimed to people in our parishes in a way which sheds the light of faith on all our daily experience, enabling us, in our turn, to be bearers of that same word to others whom we meet in the course of our lives…………...Lord hear us

If we are to be bearers of the word to others, men and women who are able to help those whom we meet interpret their life-experience in the light of God’s word, then we must put behind us for ever the idea that faith is a purely private, personal matter. Many of us, sadly, grew up in a Church which often thought this way, but, as the reading on the back of this week’s bulletin makes clear, there is no place for such an notion today. And so we pray that our faith will be of the kind that enables us to engage with the world……………………....Lord hear us

It is through our baptism that we share in the priesthood of Jesus. In many ways the whole of the Second Vatican Council was about rediscovering the meaning of this most fundamental of all the sacraments. And so we ask God to stir in us a deep sense of what baptism means so that, even if we have not always understood it in the past and its power has lain dormant and undeveloped in us, we can become now the people God longs for us to be……………….……….Lord hear us

In the second reading, St Peter speaks of how the stone rejected by the builders has become the corner stone. And so we pray for the insight we need to recognize how, in God’s providence, events in our own lives which seemed negative or meaningless at the time have become, with the passing of the years, more significant and more important than we first thought, revealing to us a God who writes straight with crooked lines and turns all things to good……………Lord hear us

On Monday, the new St Joseph’s Academy and the new St Andrew’s Primary School and Nursery open their doors for the first time. This is an important moment in the story of the Catholic community in Kilmarnock and we ask God to be with everyone involved in the weeks and months ahead. We pray, too, for a deep sense of gratitude for all that has gone before and hold up before God everyone who has helped bring us to this point in what is an on-going story…………………Lord hear us