Pentecost 2023

Pentecost 2023

Fr Ben Riley

Yesterday morning I was in Little Rock, celebrating with my brother priests the ordination of Father John Paul Heartnedy and Father Nathan Ashburn. The newest priests of our diocese. Last week I went to Subiaco Monastery to celebrate the Deaconate ordination of Cody Eveld, who will be ordained a priest next year. It is always a beautiful and humbling experience to witness ordination liturgies. Especially for guys I have known most of my life. It gives me hope and inspires a deep faith, to see young men dedicate their lives to God and to serving His people. It’s an emotional experience too, the music, the well-choregraphed liturgy, the Bishop’s heartfelt peaching, and of course it reminds me of my own ordination, and the promises I made. Which is why this candle is burning here. My 2 year anniversary of priesthood is tomorrow. Its hard to believe, it seems like my ordination was yesterday, and somehow, it also seems like it was ten years ago.

You may not know this, but a candied for the priesthood actually makes his priesthood promises a few weeks before the ordination. It usually happens during the last week of Seminary. He places his hand on a book of the Gospels and makes three sacred promises, with God as his witness. He promises to pray without ceasing, to remain celibate for the rest of his life, and he promises respect and obedience to his bishop and his bishop’s successors. For many non-religious people this might sound ridiculous. That the Church places such “severe” restrictions on its priests. And in a country that champions freedom above all, promises in general are viewed as odd, and ones such as these seem out of place and very countercultural. But nothing could be farther from the truth. Rather than limiting freedom, promises and vows expand our freedom. Let me use a common analogy to express this point. There is a school on top of a mountain, and every day for the recess the children are sent outside to play. But out of fear for falling off the mountain, they all stay right next the walls of the school. Until one day a fence is placed around the outer perimeter. Now with this boundary, this restriction, this limiting fence, the children feel safe to play all around the property. By putting up a fence, they are actually more free.

Consider now your own promises, the vows you have made. For those of you who are married, your marriage vows. You promised to in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, for rich or for poor, to love and honor your spouse all the days of your life. And for those who are not married, you might be asking what vows you have made. Consider your baptismal promises, the promises that we will make here today in place of the creed. Rather than limit your freedom, these vows give you an abundance of freedom, because they orient you toward an ultimate good, something we all strive for, everlasting life. To put this in perspective, and because good poets create but great poets steel, I am going to steal from one of the best homilies I have ever heard. It was given by the rector of Saint Meinrad Seminary on the day I made my priesthood promises. And although it mostly pertains to future priests, I would encourage you to consider your own vows, your own promises, your own vocations, and especially the baptismal promises we will make here today. And if I may, I ask you one more favor, please pray for Father John Paul Heartnedy and Nathan Ashburn, and pray for an increase in Vocations. Remembering as you pray that priests, deacons, religious brothers and sisters, they don’t fall out of the sky, they come from your families.

None of us can anticipate the days ahead.

None of us can know what dramas we are going to enact, what passions we will experience, what little deaths we will know.

None of us can anticipate the future, but all of us can anticipate our response to whatever that future brings. Jesus said, whoever is not with me is against me.

Jesus draws the line clearly.

That line defines us, it tells us what our lives are about, and, perhaps more importantly, it tells us what our lives are not about.

All this business here, all these wordy promises, all these signings and sealings is about who we are, and who we are becoming, apart from those moments in which we are so carefully wrapped up in vestments, and chalices, and incense.

Because my friends, this vocation is hard, and it is cosmic.

This vocation is not about comfort. It is not about you settling in with some degree of job security and doing the least you can do to draw your measly paycheck.This is not about going out and getting around, investing your goods in the glorious splendor of the local Walmart.

This is not about golf, or the rust accumulating on your clubs.This is not about bells ringing, dinging, tinging at the appropriate moment during the Mass.

This is not about lace, this long, or this long on your sleeves and hems.This is not about texts that are always transitory and truncated.

This is not about finery and finagling. These promises tonight, these promises so sterile and forced are setting you up for another kind of life.

This vocation you have sought after and prayed over and fought for for years, This is about a battle for the human soul. It is about a battle for your soul.

This is about pain.

This is about suffering.

This is about perseverance.

This is about fighting.

This is about bruises.

This is about wounds.

And it is not your pain, your suffering, your perseverance, your fighting, your bruises, your wounds.It is about the pain that comes from rising and falling from the same sins again, again, and again and bringing to you as confessor the same struggles.

It is about the suffering that comes from seeing real hunger and real abuse every day, hunger and abuse that so transcend the boundaries of your pleasant rectory.

It is about perseverance when the obstacles are so difficult to overcome, when people tell lies about you, when people slander your good name, when people cause you pain because of their selfishness, when they stab you in the back.

It is about the fighting that you find in the confused face of a tiny child, caught in a dirty room, bruised by his parents, beaten by his father, concussed by his mother.

It is about the bruises that are hidden under too-voluminous clothing of the wife whose drunken husband beats her up every night just for the heck of it.

It is about the wounds handed on from generation to generation that fester in your parish whether it is in the hills of Appalachia or the suburbs of Arkansas. And this is the life of Christ that you now seek to have in you, to be all of you, to control you, to define you, to penetrate you, to absorb you until there is nothing left of you and there is only Christ, only the Lord, only the suffering savior, only Jesus.

That is what you are promising tonight.

Whoever is not with me is against me.

In ourselves, there still battles two forces.

There is evil of course.

What does it look like?

It looks like your pride seeping out and torturing you in the resentment of a celibate life that creeps up on you and that you curse. You never knew you said. You knew.

It looks like your selfishness that wants some little comfort, some little solace when there is none.It looks like your willingness to turn the blind eye.It looks like nothing, a priesthood that becomes nothing.

There is evil but there is also the force of good. You are called to be the force of Good.What does it look like?

It looks like your emptiness in the face of Christ’s fullness.It looks like the life of a people whose promises are fulfilled.

It looks like your willingness in the face of Christ’s acceptance of pain and death. And to accept them with joy.

It looks like your singlemindedness in the face of Christ’ determination to drive the sins of men and women, sins placed upon your shoulders in the burden of the priest, the determination to drive those sins to the Cross and in suffering and in endurance to drink the last drop of that bitter cup of gall.

It looks like your willingness to pound the pavement of a cold, hospital parking lot at 3:00 in the morning because someone you have never heard of is dying in the ER and needs the Sacraments of the Church, needs YOU, the agent of those Sacraments.

It is the force of good that looks like your love, crawling to the altar from sheer exhaustion, and welling up with tears in the face of your utter helplessness, your helplessness without God.

That is the force of good. Let us strive after it. Whoever is not with me is against me.What force will you bring to the altar tonight? My friends, I know it will be the force for good.Now, bring it all, and you will want for nothing. Make your promises today and keep them.