Fr. Cipolla, Holy Thursday Sermon: On the Priesthood

Sermon preached by Father Richard Cipolla, St. Mary Church, Norwalk, Holy Thursday, April 9, 2009

I remember when I was studying at the Yale Divinity School in the late 1960’s and early seventies, a prominent Catholic theologian was speaking about the problem about too much emphasis on the Mass in Catholicism. He summarized his position in this way: we have to remember that the Mass is not the Christian faith. Where this theologian was going with all of this is somewhere none of want to go and has led in part to the problems we face today because of the bad theology being spouted and taught after the Second Vatican Council. The Mass is not the Catholic faith. Of course that is true. Only a fool would not see this in its obvious sense. But the fact is this: that without the Mass there is no Catholic faith. It is not as if the Mass is just one element of the Catholic picture that can be erased or left out without too much damage. No. Why we come here tonight at the beginning of the Sacred Triduum is to remember and celebrate liturgically that event in salvation history that is at the very heart of the Church—not merely part of the body—at the very core, the heart of the Church. Those words of Jesus at the Last Supper, those gestures: this lies at the center of our salvation, for this event is the making present of the Cross of Christ, by which alone we are saved. By which alone. As oft as you do this, you do this in memoria mei, in memory of who I am and what I am doing and who I am is the Son of God through whom all things were made, and what I am doing is the showing forth in bread and wine of what I shall do tomorrow on the Cross.

The Last Supper is not merely a Passover meal that Jesus and his disciples share and where the Lord foretells his sacrificial death. This is where and when the Lord of creation by his presence and words makes present the sacrificial offering of himself that will take place physically in space and time on Good Friday. This is no mere anticipation, foreshadowing, playing with words and symbols. This is the institution of the Holy Eucharist, the gift of God to the Church of the saving grace of the blood of the Cross. And when the apostles ate and drank what Christ offered them there, they ate his life-giving body and they drank his saving blood. O wondrous gift, O salutaris hostia, the saving Victim opening wide to our space and time the gates of heaven to men below! And this grace is received by all, but not as magic, for the sacraments are not magic. For the Lord’s body and blood is received at the Last Supper by both Peter and Judas, both of whom betray Jesus within a few hours. That grace is received by the rest of the apostles who flee the cross in fear except for John. Their lack of faith objectifies the presence of Christ’s grace within them. Their fear and disbelief cover that grace so that it cannot be seen or known. And yet the grace is still there for those who believe or who come to believe. Peter’s denial of Christ is indeed a terrible thing. I do not know the man. When Peter breaks down and weeps, he realizes what he has done, he realizes the enormity of it all, and in his weeping recalls: this is my body, this is my blood shed for you. And he understands what this means: that the terrible sin that he has committed has been taken on by the man being crucified, and there arises in his heart hope, hope for himself and hope for all who have sinned. When Judas realizes what he has done, he weeps, he realizes the enormity of what he has done: he hears the words this is my body, this is my blood, he sees Jesus taking the bread and wine: and he says to himself. It is impossible. Such love cannot be possible. My sin is so great. There is no hope. He refuses to believe that he can be forgiven. He rejects the grace of Christ and kills himself.

Two priests: Peter and Judas. For the Last Supper is not only the institution of the Holy Eucharist, the Mass. It is also the institution of the priesthood. In those words to the apostles: do this, Christ makes them his priests whose purpose, whose life, whose reason for being is to do this: to celebrate the memorial of Christ’s saving death and passion until he comes again at the end of time. The Last Supper was not merely a Passover meal shared by Jesus and his friends. Jesus’ words; this is my body, this is my blood shed for you, do this: radically transform what was a Passover meal into the Mass: the re-presentation of the sacrifice of the Cross. What Christ was to do physically on Good Friday was already present in his words, his gestures, his person at the Last Supper. And what the apostles received in the bread spoken over by Jesus and the wine spoken over by Jesus was his very body and blood offered for the sins of the world. It is this sublime mystery given to the Church that we celebrate tonight, this divine gift that could not exist without the second gift, the gift of the priesthood. And yet, having received the saving grace of the Sacrament, Peter denies Christ, Judas betrays him to death, and the other disciples except for John flee in fear. How can this be? Because the grace of the Sacrament is not magic: the grace of Christ cannot be operative without the co-operation of the individual. It cannot save without faith, even implicit faith. And that was lacking in these men in that situation; fear drove out their precarious faith, the darkness of the situation made them forget Jesus’ words: Take eat. Do this. They forgot who they were. They forgot in the deepest sense that they were priests. They forgot that their job is to be present in the deepest sense at the passion and death of the Lord until the end of time.
That forgetting of their priesthood comes to an end with their resurrection faith for all but Judas. Judas forgets willfully that he is a priest; his denial of his priesthood in the darkness of his deep sinfulness makes him forget his own essence and that his own essence is bound to the essence of God that is love. This denial ends in death.

On this holy night we remember that the Church, at least in the West, finds herself in a deep crisis. The symptom of the crisis is the lack of vocations to the priesthood. The cause of the crisis is the forgetting of what it means to be a priest. How can one talk of a priestly vocation, a calling to DO THIS, if there has been a collective forgetting of what a priest is. We hear about the problem of priestly identity, and this is a problem, for if you went around in your life, your marriage, your family, your job, constantly wondering who you were, paralysis would set in. All sorts of remedies are offered for the crisis in vocations: abolish celibacy, let priests get married, abolish the male priesthood, let women be priests: all in the hope increasing the numbers. But do you see that all of this avoids the underlying problem and question of the essence of priesthood, of priestly identity. This essence cannot be changed, for it was instituted by Christ and is an integral and necessary element in the Church. The forgetting of what this essence is, is at the heart of the crisis in the priesthood, not only with respect to lack of vocations—and what good intelligent young man would devote his life to something that no one could any longer define—but also with respect to the life of priests today.

The Popes from Paul VI to Benedict XVI all have spoken of the crisis of faith that lies at the heart of the crisis in the priesthood. And this faith is not merely faith in Christ and the Church; it is faith in themselves as priests, and this lack of faith is the same as forgetting who they are. What are the forces surrounding the priests that undermine his identity? They are legion, they are indeed many in this age, this age that is affronted by any evidence of the holy, affronted because holiness, especially the holiness of the priest is a reproof to the gods of individualism and license masquerading as freedom. How easy it is to forget that the washing of the feet which follows this sermon is of the essence of the priesthood and to dismiss it as mere ritual, something nice to do to twelve good man of the parish. For this act lets you know who I am as a priest, a servant to all, meant to serve, to serve at the altar of God in the first place and offer myself on the altar with the host, and from this offering comes the courage and the desire and the will to serve others, the people of this congregation and to serve the sick, the lonely, the poor and the dying.

In an age in which men have forgotten what it means to be a man, how easy it is for the priest to forget his manhood, to forget that he is called not to be an asexual religious functionary but a vir, a man-hero, that man-hero that has nothing to do with machismo but everything to do with identifying himself with the manliness of Jesus Christ, in whose person the priest stands at the altar, in that manliness that demands that he preach the truth of the Gospel in season and out of season, that manliness that does not shrink from reproving sin and then offering the remedy of Confession, that manliness that embraces the beauty of the good and the true, that manliness that resists any attempt by people to turn him into a religious Ken doll to be put on a shelf like a harmless toy.

How difficult it is to remember that the heart of his priesthood is DO THIS, to offer sacrifice for and with his people, when contrary to the firm tradition of the Church and with no mandate from the Second Vatican Council he is so often constrained by an entrenched innovation to celebrate Mass as if he were praying to the people, as if the words coming out of his mouth are addressed to the people, as if the congregation is one focus of the Mass and the priest is the other, as if he and the people form a closed ellipse that impedes so deeply the unity of priest and people, that unity that is shown so wonderfully by facing God together to offer the sacrifice.

We need no reminders that God has entrusted the glory of his priesthood to weak vessels of clay. We priests of this parish do not need this reminder. Our unworthiness is obvious, but it is to us that God has given this power and mandate to DO THIS and to be priests. We have an obligation to do what we have to do spiritually to never forget the essence of our calling, what it means to be a priest and to carry out that calling among our people. But what we do need, and what all priests need, are laity who support them with their prayers, not in some general way, but in specific ways. First of all pray that you are never a stumbling block for a priest by encouraging him to give into his weaknesses of pride and self-love and sloth and worldliness in its many forms and mere religiosity. Instead, pray that we have the courage and the faith to be servants, pray that we have the courage and faith to be men, pray that we have the courage and faith to lead lives of sacrifice that come from our faithful offering of the sacrifice of the altar. Pray that we have the courage and faith to not water down the truth in our sermons, in the confessional and in our counseling and pray that our love and concern for our people shows when we speak the truth.

And now enough words, words that are caught on the wind and are borne away into nothing Instead let us do what we are here to do: DO THIS