Chrism Mass in Rome
Posted by Rebecca Teti in Faith on Thursday, April 09, 2009 3:00 PM
This morning in Rome the Holy Father celebrated the chrism mass.
His homily is a beautiful meditation on the meaning of priesthood and on the meaning of Christian sacrifice, generally.
I thought it would make a nice companion piece to Lisa’s lovely post thanking our priests for their service.
Something I love in Benedict’s preaching is that he’s not afraid to be personal. There’s almost always something of himself—his own struggles, his own experiences—in them. He concludes with such a reflection here:
On the eve of my priestly ordination, fifty-eight years ago, I opened the Sacred Scripture, because I wanted to receive once more a word from the Lord for that day and for my future journey as a priest. My gaze fell on this passage: “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth”. Then I realized: the Lord is speaking about me, and he is speaking to me. This very same thing will be accomplished tomorrow in me. When all is said and done, we are not consecrated by rites, even though rites are necessary. The bath in which the Lord immerses us is himself – the Truth in person. Priestly ordination means: being immersed in him, immersed in the Truth. I belong in a new way to him and thus to others, “that his Kingdom may come”. Dear friends, in this hour of the renewal of promises, we want to pray to the Lord to make us men of truth, men of love, men of God. Let us implore him to draw us ever anew into himself, so that we may become truly priests of the New Covenant. Amen.
That would make a nice prayer for the entire Year of The Priest which Benedict has called for, wouldn’t it?
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