Homily for 5th Sunday of Easter

Homily for the
5th Sunday of Easter

April 20, 2008

1 Pet 2: 4-9
St. Vincent’s Hospital, Harrison, N.Y.          

As usual during the pastoral shutdown we’ve been undergoing, I offer an old homily for the current Sunday.

“Let yourselves be built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God thru Jesus Christ” (1 Pet 2: 5).

St. Peter mixes his metaphors here, 1st comparing the Christian people to the temple of God—living stones to be built into a spiritual house (v. 5)—and then reminding them that they are holy priests.

Most of us probably remember that Baptism made us into temples of the Holy Spirit.  God consecrated us to himself, as churches and temples are consecrated.  He dwells by grace within us.  He has set us apart for his service.

The Last Supper (Dagnan-Bouveret)

But most of us probably don’t think of ourselves as priests.  When we hear priest, we think of one ordained especially to minister to the people of God thru the sacraments and preaching.  Yet St. Peter calls all Christians, all the baptized, “a holy priesthood,” and he also quotes the book of Exodus (19:6) referring to all the Jewish people as priests.

This priesthood—the priesthood of the faithful or the common priesthood—is linked to the priesthood of Christ.  We share in his priesthood by virtue of our anointing with sacred chrism in 2 sacraments (Baptism and Confirmation) and by our participation in the Eucharist, the sacrifice of Christ and of his people, who offer the sacrifice in memory of him.  True, this priesthood is distinct from the ministerial priesthood of those who are ordained and anointed yet again with sacred chrism, viz., presbyters (like yours truly) and bishops.  We’re not quite sure how deacons—mentioned in our 1st reading (Acts 6:1-7) fit in here; they are in Holy Orders, ordained by the imposition of hands, like presbyters and bishops, but they aren’t anointed.  Be that as it may, the 3 sacraments that involve sacred chrism—Baptism, Confirmation, and Holy Orders—conform us interiorly and at the core of our being to Christ the Priest, as well as to Christ the King and Christ the Prophet of God.

What does the priesthood in which we all share mean?  St. Peter refers to our “spiritual worship.”  In the Old Testament the Jewish people, like many ancient peoples, thru their priests offered animal sacrifices, food sacrifices, and incense.  It was very physical worship.  Yes, they offered oral prayers and hymns too—the psalms, for example.

But in the New Testament all our worship is spiritual and not physical, in that we don’t have animal sacrifices.  The only body involved is the Body of Christ, offered on the altar of the cross and present again, sacramentally, on our altar.  The only food sacrifice is the bread and wine that become the Body and Blood of Jesus.  We use incense—as we’ve seen these days in the Pope’s Masses in Washington and New York—but in the context of oral prayers and hymns, adding solemnity to them and as a sign of reverence for sacred objects like the altar, the Book of the Gospels, the priest, and God’s holy people—these are all things or persons that may be incensed in the liturgy.

Most of all, however, the sacrifice we offer is ourselves:  our hearts, minds, bodies.  As priests we offer to God our holy lives.  Every act of virtue —of honesty, or charity, of purity, of patience, etc.—is an act of worship of God.  Every temptation we resist is a sacrifice offered to God.  We’re spiritually linked with Jesus and his eternal offering of himself to the Father on our behalf.  Each Mass makes the sacrifice of the cross present again, and we join Jesus in offering that sacrifice.  Thru him, with him, and in him we offer ourselves to the Father, so that our whole lives are a prayer, an act of worship.

Surely you remember how the sisters used to tell us to “offer it up” when something bothered us—the weather, our plans getting messed up, a pain we were suffering (I still do that very consciously whenever a dentist works on me—thank you, School Sisters of Notre Dame!).  “Offering it up” is good spiritually for those things we must put up with whether we like it or not, like weather, thwarted plans, and pain.  In fact, it’s exactly the advice that St. John Bosco gave to little Dominic Savio, who was complaining that the priest wouldn’t let him perform any rigorous penances, which, the boy thought, was a requirement for growing in holiness.  Don Bosco told him to put up cheerfully with extremes of the weather, with food he didn’t like, with doing his schoolwork and house chores, with his rough companions (boys can be thoughtless and sometimes cruel, as we all know).

More particularly, we are priests as we worship God in our prayer.  All of us take part in offering the Eucharist to the Father; the ordained priest speaks in the name of every baptized person who is present and, indeed, in the name of the entire Church.  Your “amens” signal your share in the prayers.  All of us make those intercessory prayers we call the “prayers of the faithful.”  All of us who are baptized, free of serious sin, and in full union of faith are invited to come to altar and share in the Body and Blood of Christ.  We are priests when we sing or pray to God publicly or privately, praising God, thanking God, interceding for others.  All of these are our “spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God thru Jesus Christ.”

May Jesus Christ, our great high priest, rejoice that we belong to him and share in his self-offering.  May our worship and our lives be sacrifices pleasing to God until we reach the inheritance that God has promised us in Christ (cf. Collect).