Episode Transcript
[00:00:12] Speaker A: Welcome to the Blessed Sacrament Homilies podcast where our mission is to help everyone recognize and experience the presence of God. We hope you are nourished and encouraged by the Word. Thank you for joining us.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: The Lord be with you and with your spirit. A Reading from the Holy Gospel According to Luke Glory to you, O lord. In the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea and Herod was Tetrarch of Galilee and his brother Philip, tetrarch of the region of Iturea and Trachonitis and Lysanias was Tetrarch of Abilene. During the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the Word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the desert.
John went throughout the whole region of the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
As it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, A voice of one crying out in the desert, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths. Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill made low.
The winding roads shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God, the Gospel of the Lord. Praise to you, Lord Jesus.
This gospel will always hold a very special place in my heart.
And if you saw earlier, Kristen posted the homily from my ordination and this was the gospel that was proclaimed on that day.
And if you did read that homily, you'll notice that Bishop Untner tied the events of the recent years to put me and that day into time in the same sense that Luke's Gospel puts the ministry and mission of John the Baptist into time.
He had a particular thing he was called to do, a mission given to no one else.
And he fulfilled that mission very well.
And Bishop Buntner set up his homily on that day of my ordination to remind me that that was the task given to me to fulfill a particular mission for God.
Now, I'm not sure if all people being ordained a priest feel the same way, but I had some preconceived notions about what I thought it would be like the next day.
I thought all of those things I've struggled with, those things that we call sin that I kept tripping up on would suddenly be much easier to deal with.
I thought that every word that would come out of my mouth would be profound and eloquent and change lives.
And I thought that I would suddenly become the holy person I was called upon to be.
It took me about 15 minutes to realize that that wasn't going to happen.
Any of those things were going to happen. The sins I struggled with the day before are actually the things I struggle with today.
The words that come out of my mouth sometimes are twisted and illogical, and I am so far from holiness that I can't even begin to describe it to you.
But what I found that came through that day in reality for me has been so much more profound, so much more faith building.
Because I quickly came to realize that those people I was called to minister to in reality minister to me much more than I ever minister to them. To you.
I have seen profound faith in the midst of profound suffering.
I have seen hard work and giving of oneself beyond measure.
And I have been shown compassion and forgiveness, understanding and love from those people I've ministered to and with.
And all of those traits that I have found in people like you have made my faith so much stronger than it was on that day of my ordination.
That might sound silly to you, but it really isn't.
Because the way that God gets revealed to us each and every day of our lives is through other people, through their love, their compassion, their presence, their faith. And I've seen that in all of you. I saw that in my previous parishes, that the real strength of our faith, the rock solidness of Christ's presence, isn't just in the hierarchy, it's not in the clergy. It's in the living, breathing body of Christ, which you are all a part of. Which we are all a part of.
And that way that John the Baptist prepared is the way that all of you exist in the world. Making Christ's presence known, making the hills low and the valleys filled, truly making him know.
