Advent: Fire Watch

(First Sunday of Advent-Year B; This homily was given on 26 & 27 November, 2011 at St. Mary's Church in Charlestown, R.I. and St. James Chapel in Charlestown, R.I.; See Mark 13:33-37)

One of the more engaging and enigmatic Catholic figures of the last century is the Trappist monk, Thomas Merton. Born in France toward the beginning of the twentieth century, by the time he was a young man Merton had both lived in and travelled extensively across Europe and the United States. He was a man very much immersed in the things of the world. Nonetheless, for all of his experiences and intellectual accomplishments he remained empty and unsatisfied.

Not finding what he was searching for in the midst of the world, Merton turned his gaze instead to things spiritual: religion, prayer and faith. This eventually led to his conversion to the Catholic faith and he was baptized in his early twenties.

Following baptism Merton felt called to the priesthood and eventually entered the Abbey of Gethsemani, a Trappist monastery located in Kentucky. His autobiography on this journey of faith from the midst of the world to the silence of the monastery, The Seven Storey Mountain, has sold millions of copies and is considered to be one of the most influential spiritual works of modern times.

In his book, The Sign of Jonas, somewhat of a continuation of The Seven Storey Mountain, Merton writes on his experience within the Abbey of Gethsemani and offers his readers a glimpse of day-to-day monastic life. The epilogue, entitled “Fire Watch, July 4, 1952,” is indicative in that regard.

The fire watch was a responsibility often entrusted to a novice or perhaps a newly ordained priest in which the monk would inspect the buildings and property of the monastery after dark, insuring that all was well and that potential risks and hazards were attended to. After careful observation, with the assistance of a flashlight, the watchman would then retire with the rest of the community in relative peace and security; discretion is the better part of valor. It was fairly mundane business.

Yet for Merton the fire watch becomes something quite personal and introspective. Shining that flashlight into the kitchen and then the refectory, he recalls the experiences he has shared there with his brothers; he is a man of community who has to discern whether and how well he has loved his brothers in that place. He shines the lamp into the novitiate, where he himself was formed for the priesthood, then into the chapel where he was ordained for service and charity. Has he been faithful in these solemn duties and responsibilities? He recognizes, all too well, that this is where one comes “face to face with your monastic past and with the mystery of your vocation.” And then, suddenly, he begins to realize that all the while, as he was fulfilling his work as watchman both exteriorly and interiorly, someone else was actually watching him:

The fire watch is an examination of conscience in which your task as watchman suddenly appears in its true light: a pretext devised by God to isolate you, and to search your soul with lamps and questions, in the heart of darkness.

—Fr. Thomas Merton, The Sign of Jonas

The more Merton searched for and questioned the God of his vocation in the midst of his fire watch, the more he began to realize that God was already searching for and seeking him, asking the most intimate of questions in the deepest recesses of his soul.

People often ask me when and how I first felt called to the priesthood. It usually comes as a surprise when I tell them that it happened in Stop & Shop Supermarket! Be careful when you shop in those places! Actually, I was not shopping; I was working there, and it happened over the course of several years. Initially, I was given the opportunity to receive full-time pay and benefits, but it would require me to begin working the graveyard shift, midnight to eight o’clock in the morning.

At first it was rather exciting to be working such odd hours as a young man recently out of high school; but that quickly began to wear off. In the department I was in, I worked alone all night and when I came home I usually slept and went out infrequently at night, since I eventually had to come back home and get ready for work. I was living a very isolated life. I had no idea that it was actually isolation by design.

Many times I would ask myself, at three o’clock in the morning and when everyone I knew and cared about was home asleep, “What on earth am I doing here?” Eventually, in those long, pre-dawn hours, I began to ask that question on a much more metaphysical level: “What am I doing here? What is the purpose and meaning of my life? Might God have the answer to these questions?

It was at that time in my life that I began to sense what I would later understand as the promptings of God in the dark. As I was searching and asking questions about my life, I discovered that God was calling me into a deeper relationship with Himself, one that would eventually lead me to discern a vocation to the priesthood. In the words of Thomas Merton:

The fire watch is an examination of conscience in which your task as watchman suddenly appears in its true light: a pretext devised by God to isolate you, and to search your soul with lamps and questions, in the heart of darkness.

This weekend we begin again the holy season of Advent. It is, above all, a time of watching. Christ warns us in the Gospel this weekend:

Be watchful! Be alert! You do not know when the time will come.

—Mark 13:33

Christ calls us to be watchful for His coming, to be alert to His advent, and it is no coincidence that this is the darkest time of the year. Now is the season where the days are much shorter and the nights grow longer; now is the time when the darkness of worldly distractions can lull us into a spiritual sleep, tempting us to embrace a Christmas without Christ and mirth separated from the One who made us. Perhaps even our own cares and concerns—whether they be financial difficulties, personal or family health issues, fears or anxieties about the past, present or future—can allow the darkness to creep into our lives. It is precisely in these times that we need to be watchful and alert to the presence of Christ who is always nearer than we would ever dare to hope.

May we discover, in our watchfulness this Advent Season, that even our very best efforts to search for and discover God can barely hold a candle to the vigilance and loving watchfulness He initiates when it comes to our spiritual lives. In our fire watch this Advent, may we discover more completely God, who draws us ever more deeply not into the heart of darkness, but into the heart of Jesus Christ, His Son, who comes to us in the midst of the darkness and illumines our souls with His heavenly light.

Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

(Feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary-Year A; This homily was given on 21 November, 2011 at the Seminary of Our Lady of Providence, Providence, R.I.; See Luke 21:1-4)

It should come as no surprise that the world we live in is becoming increasingly more secular. That is the reality not just in Europe but also here in the United States. The culture in which we are being formed is one that has become more and more alienated from, at times even hostile toward, the things of God. What we value most as Catholics—faith, sacrifice, obedience to the teachings of the Church which have not constrained but set free and guided the souls of millions of faithful men and women for centuries—these things are increasingly questioned and even discounted.

This creates a challenge for us who are called to proclaim and announce the message of the Gospel to the world. What does it mean to announce this message of faith and eternal life in a context where materialism and the values of this world only hold sway? Even within the Church, we encounter the difficulty of announcing the Good News to those who have also been affected by the culture in which we live. Catechesis, the explanation of our faith and the teachings of the Church, are done sometimes only with difficulty and the challenges are many.

We can ask ourselves, “How could I ever expect to be an effective minister of the Gospel or a fruitful priest in the face of so many challenges?” Perhaps Fr. Robert Barron or Archbishop Dolan could make a difference, but what about me? What do I have to offer to the world or to the Church facing such adversity and so many obstacles to faith and the truth of the Gospel?

This morning we are reminded—by St. Luke and in this Feast of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary—that when we give what we have to God, He "by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think" (Ephesians 3:20).

The old woman in the Gospel of St. Luke places a meager offering into the treasury, just two small coins. It would have been thoroughly inadequate and insufficient to put even a dent into the amount necessary for sustaining the day-to-day maintenance of the temple. Yet it is more than sufficient to gain the attention of the eternal Son of God. Christ takes notice, his interest is instantly piqued, and he points her out to His disciples as the exemplar of what it means to give oneself entirely to God. That passing moment becomes immortalized in the Gospel; the story of this woman and her two small coins will continue to be told until the end of time. We give God what we have and He accomplishes great and awesome things.

Such is the case of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Her parents Anne and Joachim bring her to the temple and present her before the Lord. A young girl, especially in the cultural climate of the day, would have been insignificant indeed in comparison with the great religious and political conflicts that were legion at that time in occupied Palestine. She was not a man who could someday become king, or have great influence on the political scene. Yet that young girl would be the gateway through which the Redeemer of the world would come. Upon her “Fiat,” her simple, humble, “Yes,” to God rests the hope of salvation and the redemption of all mankind. She was all that Anne and Joachim had, and they gave her to the Lord. The rest is salvation history.

What is God asking of you today? What is the offering you are asked to make as you continue your formation for the priesthood of Jesus Christ? The world in which we live does not always value a vocation to the priesthood. Your offering may seem insignificant and insufficient to meet the needs of what the world is searching for. But that offering, made to God in sincere faith and trust in Him, has the power to bear tremendous fruit in the Church and in the world. Today we make that offering to God. Joined to His sacrifice and His offering at this altar, we surrender to Him what we have, and we trust in faith that He will continue to accomplish beautiful and awesome things in us.

And With Your Spirit

(Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time-Year A; This homily was given on 22 & 23 September, 2011 at St. Mary's Church in Cranston, R.I. and Holy Cross Church in Providence, R.I.; SeeMatthew 22:34-40)

In just a few short weeks, with the Third Edition of the Roman Missal being introduced on the First Sunday of Advent, we will experience one of the most significant changes in our celebration of Mass since the period following the Second Vatican Council. Certainly the holy sacrifice of the Mass does not change. Our union with Christ in the Eucharist can never change for “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). But many of the words and phrases in the prayers we offer and the responses we share each week will indeed change.

Well before that happens, of course, there will be pew cards available that will identify the words and phrases that are slightly different from what we have grown accustomed to for decades. Change is never easy but I am sure that before long we will become as familiar with the new expressions as we were with the previous ones. Hopefully we will even discover that the changes themselves are instrumental in helping us to draw ever more deeply into the mystery and the majesty of the encounter with the living God that we experience every time we gather together for Mass. We are doing something far greater than refining our language in the liturgy; we are embracing changes that will help us enter more intimately into the life of God.

Today I would like to focus on one of those changes, the very first one that we will encounter on November 27, 2011. On that First Sunday of Advent the priest celebrant will make the sign of the cross at the beginning of Mass and greet the people with the words, “The Lord be with you.”

Instead of the response, “And also with you,” however, the response of the assembled community will now be, “And with your spirit.” I am sure you would agree that it is a very small change. In fact, you might argue that it is such a small change that perhaps it is not even necessary. Yet what is being communicated in that small change, and indeed throughout that brief exchange that we participate in at the beginning of every Mass, speaks volumes.

“The Lord be with you,” the priest proclaims in his greeting.

The Lord, who says to us in Sacred Scripture, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20), this God is with us.

Christ, who abides silently and lovingly in the tabernacle of every Roman Catholic Church is with us.

Christ, whose body and blood are made present on the altar of sacrifice and received by His Church assembled before Him in the presence of the angels, He is with us. He is indeed with us!

“And with your spirit,” the community responds. And with your spirit. There is a spiritual reality taking place here in the Mass that needs to be made known at the beginning. The opening greeting and response set the tone for what we are about to enter into, a spiritual and physical encounter with Jesus Christ, the Son of God. We are not just bodies gathered together in His Church. We are bodies and souls and that is something we are in constant need of remembering.

The world in which we live does not always acknowledge the spiritual nature of our existence. Our culture is one preeminently focused on the body and the material world. If you are not convinced of this, turn on your TV or go to the movies. Even when there is an attempt to dabble in things spiritual, they are often explored only in as much as they relate to one’s existence in this world, this present life.

The great Christian writer C.S. Lewis, in a sermon he gave at Oxford University back in 1942 called The Weight of Glory, said that we are in urgent need of being rescued from “the evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us for nearly a hundred years.” He explains how “almost all our modern philosophies have been devised to convince us that the good of man is to be found on this earth.”

In seventy years not much has changed in that regard. And yet the good we search for, the glory to which God beckons us, the “far-off country” for which we long, none of these have been found on this earth. Sic transit gloria mundi. The glory of this world passes. The good and the glory which we yearn for can only be found beyond this world, in heaven. How remarkably astonishing then, that the God of heaven and the God of glory should choose to come here to this earth and find us! That is what we are celebrating in the liturgy. God is with us, physically, and with our spirit.

In the Gospel for this weekend Christ is asked which of the commandments is the greatest. His response is not simply, “Love God, love neighbor.” That is a truncated and incomplete translation of what He gives in answer to that all-important question. He says not, “Love God, love neighbor,” but:

You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

—Matthew 22:37-39

With all your heart…and with all your soul…and with all your mind.

Christ acknowledges the whole person, the entirety of the human person whom He has created and redeemed and sustained by His love. Our response to so great a gift as life and redemption must be more than a mere physical obedience and pious action. We must love God with our bodies and with our souls, with our hearts and minds, our intentions and our wills, with everything we have and are. That is what it means to love God. Such love can only be complete, of course, when we take the same holistic stance in solidarity with and charity towards our neighbor.

At the conclusion of his sermon, C.S. Lewis holds up this love of neighbor as the hallmark of our own call to heavenly glory and union with God. He notes how it is certainly possible to be too concerned or too occupied with one’s own glory (a spiritual myopia, as it were). But, he says, “It is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbor.”

Guided by this focused and passionate desire for our neighbor’s glory, our neighbor’s journey towards that heavenly homeland, Lewis notes how our perspective and our everyday relations regarding those around us can and must be changed. This spiritual nature, which we acknowledge whenever we gather together for the Mass –and with your spirit—this spiritual reality is one that negates any possibility for regarding our neighbor as ordinary. We are destined, body and soul, to endure beyond this world for all eternity. In heaven, or, God forbid, separated from God and heaven, we will exist beyond this place, in a life that never ends. That changes things; it changes everything.

“There are no ordinary people,” writes Lewis:

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations.

How is God challenging us to help our neighbor to that eternal relationship with Him, to share in His glory in that heavenly homeland? How are we called to love God with all of our hearts, all of our souls, and all of our minds in our everyday relationships and experiences this week? May we truly come to experience this love which begins here on this earth and transcends all earthly bounds, and in so doing come to recognize all the more that God is totally and completely with us, and with our spirit.

September 11: A Remembrance

(Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time-Year A; This homily was given on 10 September, 2011 at Blessed Sacrament Church, Providence, R.I. and 11 September at St. Anthony's Church in Providence, R.I.; See Matthew 18:21-35)

There is a museum in Jerusalem called Yad Vashem and it was established to commemorate the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust during World War II. The name of that museum, Yad Vashem, comes from the Hebrew Scriptures (our Old Testament) and is found in the Book of the Prophet Isaiah. In Chapter 56 of Isaiah, the Lord is comforting and consoling the people of Israel who have seen such devastation and loss after years of exile in the land of Babylon. As they return to their native land, God makes this promise to His chosen people, that for those who now keep His covenant and law, “I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name which shall not be cut off” (Isaiah 56:5).

A monument and a name. In Hebrew, a Yad vashem.

In naming the Holocaust museum Yad Vashem, the message is clear that for those innocent men and women whose lives were tragically taken away, there will always be a remembrance. In fact, God Himself will remember them always for He knows them each by name.

Today we commemorate the thousands of men and women in our own nation whose lives were tragically cut short ten years ago in the terrorist attacks of September 11. It is not the same experience as the Holocaust; we know that. But for those who have lost family members and loved ones; for those who were personally harmed by the events of that fateful day; even for us as a nation, the sense of injustice, pain and sorrow is the same. The words of the Prophet Isaiah call to mind for us today the reality that these lives too will be given a place of remembrance, a yad vashem. The Lord remembers each of these men and women, created in His image and likeness; He knows them each by name.

The sense of memory and remembrance are central themes for us as Catholics. We celebrate Masses of Remembrance for our beloved deceased; we call to mind our identity as people of faith by remembering the history of salvation whenever the Eucharistic Prayer is offered; we recall Christ’s passion, death and resurrection and unite ourselves to Him in the hope of our own resurrection from the dead. We are people of remembrance.

In our Gospel this weekend St. Matthew reminds us of the importance of the memory when it comes to the commandment to forgive as we ourselves have been forgiven. Christ tells the parable of the king whose servant owed him “a huge amount” (Matthew 18:24). In fact, the debt was so great that in order to settle accounts with the king, the servant and his family would have to be sold off, along with all his property and possessions. He was personally and financially ruined, and he knew it. Falling to his knees before the king he pleaded for patience and the chance to pay it all back.

Suddenly the king, in a moment of extreme compassion and mercy, decides to forgive him the entire debt! It was a remarkable and seemingly unforgettable event. Yet immediately after leaving the presence of the king that servant forgets all about it—or choses to forget. He encounters a fellow servant who owes him a much smaller amount and seizes him, demanding that he pay it back immediately.

The point that Christ is making is that our memories and our hearts should be able to retain the great compassion and mercy of God so abundantly and even extravagantly poured out upon us. From that great resource of Divine Mercy, then, we should be able to act in kind to those who owe us so much less. Christ plays the numbers game with St. Peter in the Gospel: not seven times should we fogive, but seventy-seven times (other translations read seventy times seven, i.e., four-hundred and ninety). Whatever translation we are reading or however we calculate forgiveness, few if any of us can think of one person who has injured us four-hundred and ninety times, or even seventy-seven times. But we have all offended God at least seventy-seven times, perhaps even this week. Remember that! Remember what it is like to be loved that much and to be given so great a gift as God’s unconditional mercy and love.

There is a story about a Christian woman named Corrie Ten Boom who, along with her father and sister, helped to shelter Jews in the Netherlands during the Second World War. She would later write a book about her experience called, The Hiding Place. At one point their activity was discovered and they were taken into custody by the Nazis. Corrie’s father died soon thereafter but Corrie and her sister were moved to several places, eventually finding themselves in the concentration camp named Ravensbruk. It was there that Corrie’s sister died shortly before Corrie herself was freed.

Remarkably, Corrie began traveling around the world after the war in order to share the message of God’s merciful love. Her message was that God forgives—even the horrors of the Holocaust—God forgives. As you might imagine, it was a compelling and powerful witness.

She had just finished that talk in a small Church outside of Munich when she saw a man approaching from the back of the room. Her blood ran cold as she recognized him. He had been one of the SS guards at Ravensbruck, and one of the cruelest. He had no idea who she was.

“A fine message,” he said. “How good it is to know that, as you say, our sins are forgiven by God. You mentioned Ravensbruck in your talk. I was a guard there. But since that time, I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from you, as well.”

He held out his hand to her, and at that very moment she thought of her sister, who had died in that place. She later recalled, “I stood there—I whose sins had again and again needed to be forgiven—and could not forgive.”

But she knew the power of forgiveness; she had spoken of it so many times. She knew that forgiveness was above all an act of the will, and that she did not need to feel like forgiving someone in order to actually do so. Suddenly she began to pray: Jesus, help me. I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You do the rest.

And as she shook the hand of that former SS guard, she began to feel a love for him that could only come from God. She said later that she had never known God’s love as intensely as she did that day.

We are called to be people of forgiveness in imitation of Christ who forgives each of us for so very much. Often times that is not an easy thing to do. Perhaps sometimes all we can do is struggle lift up our hands to God, to raise our hearts to Him, asking for the grace to forgive. When we do so, whether it be something small or maybe even as overwhelming as the terrorist attacks on our nation ten years ago, we trust that God is with us, helping us and allowing us to participate in His merciful love. May we have the grace necessary to remember all that He has done for us, all that He has forgiven us, so that the mercy flowing from the cross can continue to work in and through us in our daily lives.

Salvation, Hope & Prayer

(Opening Mass for the Formation Year 2011, Seminary of Our Lady of Providence; This homily was given on 7 September, 2011; See Romans 8:22-27)

Why are we here tonight? Why are we here, gathered together before this altar, celebrating a Mass in honor of the Holy Spirit at the beginning of this formation year?

I would suggest this evening that there is only one answer sufficient to answer completely that question. It is a response and answer found on every page of the Gospel; in every ounce of blood that Christ shed for us on the cross; in all of His pain, sorrow and suffering; in all of His joy, triumph and exaltation; it is a response which is also found in the depths of our own hearts, in a longing and yearning too deep for words.

We are here tonight for salvation.

We gather together tonight to be saved by God. Christ gives Himself to us in the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist, a foretaste of the eternal life we are called to share with Him. He comes to us to draw us into eternal union with God. It is why He shares with us His body and blood, it is why He instituted the priesthood: for the salvation of souls.

St. Paul, in our first reading this evening, lifts up for us that great mystery of our salvation. He holds it up in all its splendor and beautifully intertwines that mystery with two powerful dimensions of our Catholic faith:

Hope and prayer.

“For in hope we were saved” (Romans 8:24), St. Paul tells us. Our beloved Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI begins his encyclical on hope, Spe Salvi, with these very words of St. Paul.

Spe salvi facti sumus. In Hope we were saved.

The Apostle goes on, in his Letter to the Romans, to speak of our human response to this great hope of salvation. He says that we yearn and long for it “with inexpressible groanings” (Romans 8:26) heartfelt prayers in which the Holy Spirit intercedes for us, drawing us ever more deeply into the mystery of our salvation.

These two, then: hope and prayer.

But the sense that our culture has of these two things, hope and prayer, is one that is very different from what the Apostle calls us to in that Letter to the Romans. Often times people see hope as a deep desire or wish for things to simply “work out well in the end.” But this “wishful thinking” is not hope.

Prayer can also become a wish list which is offered up to God for His ratification: this is what I wish for; please grant it to me.

How different, how deep and remarkably beautiful is the hope and prayer that we are called to embrace as men of God being formed for the priesthood of Jesus Christ.

Hope as a theological virtue is not a mere wish that the future will "pan out" for us. St. John of the Cross, in fact, in is spiritual writings, does not ground hope in the future at all, but more so in the past. He says that hope is linked to the faculty of the soul commonly understood as the memory (see The Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book Three, Ch. 14).

The hope we have for a future with God is rooted in the events of the past and what that means for us today and everyday hereafter. Jesus Christ suffered and died for us on the cross, for love. That happened, and nothing will ever change that. Three days later Christ rose to life again; He made promises to the Church and kept every single one of them. He has promised you and me that if we place our faith in Him, if we put our trust and love in Him, then we will be saved, we will share in eternal life with God. That is the basis for our hope and the rock-solid foundation for everything that we believe. That is what St. Paul means when he writes, “In hope we were saved.” God is faithful. He has always been faithful. We can trust and hold fast to everything He reveals to us through His holy Catholic Church.

But we are not always prepared to respond in faith and trust to so great a hope of salvation; we do not always choose to stand on so solid a foundation. We are in need, every one of us, of holiness and purification. Our hearts need to be prepared to receive so great a gift as God Himself. Pope Benedict XVI speaks of this necessity, in his encyclical Spe Salvi, in terms of hope and prayer. He writes:

Man was created for greatness—for God himself; he was created to be filled by God. But his heart is too small for the greatness to which it is destined. It must be stretched.

—Spe Salvi, #33

Borrowing an image from the writings of St. Augustine, Pope Benedict describes how God wishes to fill or souls with honey, but that is not possible when our hearts are already filled with vinegar.

Think of all the bitterness that sin can bring to the human heart and how necessary it is that God drain from us every ounce of this vinegar. He can then stretch these vessels of ours and increase our capacity to receive the sweetness of real honey, His own Divine life poured out deep within the soul. God wants to purify our hearts and fill us with this sweetness, not only for ourselves but for all the souls we will encounter in our daily lives.

“Through this effort by which we are freed from vinegar and the taste of vinegar,” writes Pope Benedict XVI, “not only are we made free for God, but we also become open to others.”

This is at the heart of the purifying power of prayer. Pope Benedict goes on to say that in order for this purifying power to develop, it necessarily involves two things.

§ First and foremost it involves intimacy with God. We come into this chapel, time and time again, day and night, and spend intimate time alone in prayer with God. We come before the one who is so worthy of our love, all the while painfully aware of our own unworthiness. We acknowledge, time and time again, that we do not deserve so great a love, so great a gift, that we could never earn this indescribable love that God has for us, but that He is always present to us whenever we come before Him in humility and in faith. The purifying power of intimacy with God in prayer is essential to our salvation.

§ Secondly, this purifying prayer “must be constantly guided and enlightened by the great prayers of the Church and of the saints, by liturgical prayer, in which the Lord teaches us again and again how to pray properly” (Spe Salvi, #34). It is not the case that we become expert in the art of prayer and then impose our expertise on the Church and Her liturgy. Rather, we come to the Sacred Liturgy in awe and wonder, we bow before this great Sacrament of our salvation and we learn anew how to pray and offer ourselves to Him. The saints teach us this great act of worship. The Church throughout the centuries has guided the souls of countless men and women in these most sacred mysteries.

As we begin this new formation year, it is my prayer for each one of you that you will grow in the theological virtue of hope, a hope which is rooted on the rock-solid promises of the risen Christ; and through the purifying power of prayer, may God gently and loving allow you to be emptied of all vinegar and stretched out to the capacity to which you can receive so sweet a gift as this honey which is His Divine life within you.

As you continue to be prepared for the day of ordination, may hope and prayer continue to make you more and more like Christ so that, when the people of God approach you as their priest, yearning and longing for salvation with groanings perhaps too deep for words, you will have something beautiful and sweet to offer them.