"My Priesthood"
My dear fellow workers in the Lord’s vineyard,
As we celebrate the Lord’s Supper this evening, The Last Supper, I stand here having had the privilege of being ordained a priest for almost 56 years.
It is a great privilege to have been ordained to the priesthood, and as the years have gone by and as I get older, my mind has been turning to and both reflecting on and meditating on the words that Christ says at each Mass and I, as another Christ, say with him as I celebrate each Mass. Those words, which have become more and more meaningful for me, are the Christ’s words at the consecration of the bread: “This is my body, given up for you.” To see the importance of these words, and their meaning, one needs to remember that by virtue of incarnation, Christ became a human being like us in all things but sin. And as a human being, He acquired the ability that we all have, and are meant to live; what is referred to, in Church teaching, as the nuptial meaning of the body. That is, that, as human beings, we are so created that the gift of our body, too is also the gift of the person; we are always meant to have that harmony. With the gift of the body is always being the gift of the person.
And it is by the virtue of this nuptial meaning of the body, that Christ, when he says “This is my body, given up for you,” at the Mass, he gives to his Heavenly Father the gift of his Divine Person. And when he says that to us in Holy Communion, he is giving us not only the gift of his body in the consecrated bread, but he is particularly giving us the gift of his Divine Person: an incredible gift that shows the depths of the love that he has for us and for his Heavenly Father, a love that makes it possible for the Father to do further good for Him, as he did in the resurrection from the dead, and makes it possible for Christ to do further good for us, in giving us his Divine Person, in the Holy Eucharist.
And he does further good for us in helping us to come to understand the meaning of what we are able to do as priests, and He encourages us to live that meaning through the whole day, after we have said it, during our daily Mass. I have been reflecting as I have been getting older, on how am I living it to the best of my ability. Some examples: Am I making the gift of myselfthroughthe gift of my body; when I get up in the morning, and go to the church to celebrate Mass, do I say: “This is my body, given up for you," when it would be so nice to give it up to the bed, but that’s not an act of love. But to give it to Christ and his Heavenly Father and to the congregation is an act of love that makes further love possible.
I realize that I also live that meaning, “This is my body given up for you,” whenever I sit in the confessional and hear confessions and absolve peoples’ sins and make the world a better place, and that love makes it possible for others to have more good done for them and to do further good. I live that to the best of my ability as a priest when I baptise a person who Christ has called to be one of his disciples, whether as a child or as an adult. I live that meaning, “This is my body, given up for you,” when I go to the hospital to anoint someone who is dying, in the middle of the night. It is an act of love that makes it possible for further good to be done to that person. And so that gift of love continues to grow.
And as I get older, I continue to pray that I will be able, when the time comes for Christ to call me to meet him, so he can introduce me to the Heavenly Father, that I will be able to make the gift of self to Christ so he in turn can give me as a gift to the Heavenly Father: a gift that he will hold on to for eternity. And so as I reflect on these almost 56 years of priesthood, I rejoice and give thanks for having been called to this vocation, and particularly I continue to pray that each day that I have the privilege of saying with Christ, as another Christ, “This is my body, given up for you,” and to be able to continue to love Christ and his Heavenly Father, but particularly to be able to love in a more, deeper way those that the Father entrusts to my priestly care. And in the gift of myself as a priest, the love of the Father, experienced in these different ways, I ask him to help me to continue to grow in my willingness to give the gift of my body, so that I can give the gift of myself.
And I would ask you, as laypeople, that each time you are able to participate in the sacrifice of the Mass, whether via streaming or eventually by being in the church itself, during at Mass, that when you hear the priest say those words with Christ, as another Christ, “This is my body, given up for you,” stop for a moment and ask the Blessed Mother to help that priest to be able to live the meaning of what he is saying with Christ in that Mass, to live it each day more and more, for she understands the meaning of what is being expressed in those words; for she in her own way said at the Annunciation and lived it, “This is my body, given up for you,” during the time of the pregnancy, so that she could give us the gift of Christ as a mother.
Amen.
(Fr. Joseph Hattie, OMI, Holy Thursday 2020)