Homily for Tuesday
Week 7 of Easter
& Ordination
Anniversary
May 19, 2026
Acts 20: 17-27
John 17: 1-11
Christian Brothers, St.
Joseph’s Residence, N.R.
“I earnestly bore
witness for both Jews and Gentiles to repentance before God and to faith in our
Lord Jesus” (Acts 20: 21).
"You are a priest forever"
(window in provincial house chapel)
Last year I preached
to you on that same text. But it was on
June 3—quite a different context than today.[1]
In his farewell
message to the church elders from Ephesus, Paul identifies his ministry as
“bearing witness to the Gospel of God’s grace” (20:24).
That summarizes the
mission of a priest, one Christ has called out of the world (John 17:6) to go
into the world (17:10) to make known God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ,
from whom we receive the gift of eternal life (17:2-3). Jesus announces that he has revealed the
Father’s name (17:6), which means the Father himself, to those whom the Father
has given him out of the world (17:6).
As Pope Francis often reminded us, the name of God is mercy. Another word for that is grace.
Jesus gives a tough
task to priests—and not only to priests but to many others as well, to be
missionaries of the Gospel to a world not eager to hear it, not eager to repent
and open itself to grace. The priest
himself comes to Jesus, is summoned by Jesus, as a sinner, one who himself
needs “repentance before God” so as to bear witness to grace. He, too, acknowledges God as “a saving God”
who “bears our burdens” so as to lead us to salvation (Ps 68:20).
Jesus tells his Father, “The words you gave to me I have given to them” (John 17:8). Sharing in Christ’s priesthood, the man whom Christ has called has that same mission: as a steward of the mysteries (collect of anniversary Mass) to give to Christ’s faithful the words he has received, “the Gospel of God’s grace,” grace he has himself experienced as God’s gift, a gift God want to share with all of humanity.
[1] The preacher's 48th ordination anniversary.
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