Sacred Heart of Jesus, B 5th Anniversary of Ordination June 11, 2021
Fr. Albert St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette
Five years ago today, and very nearly to the hour, I was ordained a priest in a different Church named St. John the Evangelist. It was our Cathedral, and it was the first priestly ordination in the diocese for our new bishop, Douglas Deshotel.
There’s a reason for the specificity and it’s not because I think I’m special. My ordination is not about me. It is the concrete manifestation of God’s ongoing love for us. This love created the world, it placed it’s image and likeness upon Adam and Eve, it was betrayed by them and left humanity broken, unable to return the love that made them. While the dates and details of that first fall are not recorded with journalistic precision, they are nonetheless real events, a real part of real history.
God is not a God of myth and distance. He is the God of history, of real life. And since the fall, this real God of the real world planned for his love to triumph over the sin and death brought into the world by humanity’s abuse of its freedom. Even though his Justice could rightly destroy us all, that was not his plan. As he speaks through the prophet Isaiah, “My heart is overwhelmed, my pity is stirred. I will not give vent to my blazing anger, I will not destroy Ephraim again; For I am God and not a man, the Holy One present among you; I will not let the flames consume you.”
A man would destroy us for our sins and be justified in doing so, but Hs is “God and not a man.” Yet, he was not content with that so for our sakes, he did become a man. He not only transcended human vengeance and justice, but sough to transform even human nature itself, taking on a human heart so that as both God and Man, with both a human and diving heart, he could manifest his merciful love and enable other human hearts to do the same. About Two Thousand years ago, on March 25th, an angel appeared to a teenage girl in Nazareth – a real person in a real place in history – and announced this plan to her. Accepting this unusual change to her own plans, Mary’s immaculate heartbeat was joined by another a mere 6 weeks later and God’s love was physically manifest in a new way, but an eternal way.
That human heart grew, was nourished by the food provided by Joseph and Mary. It circulated minute by minute the blood that was soon to be shed for us, gaining us eternal redemption. It beat faster with the many joys of childhood, it knew the distress and anguish of loss that is inescapable in this world. Then one day, a day carefully recorded by an eyewitness in the gospel we’ve just heart, that heart was pierced. Blood and water flowed from it and the world say in physical form the extent of love which God had for us.
The love that flowed then continues to flow. All graces flow through that human heart that is also divine. And as always, God works in mystery, but also concretely in individual lives and real moments. 7 sacraments, 7 audible, tangible encounters with the grace that flows from that most Sacred Heart. But these historically real, these presently available encounters need someone real and present to enact them, to perform them, to celebrate them.
And that is why I was born. It is why at this time and in this place, I am here as a priest. Ordained 5 years ago so that today and everyday I have the potential and the real opportunity to manifest the love of that heart pierced for love of me and love of you. Though often unworthily, I celebrate the sacraments so that you might know the love that that heart pierced for you and for me. So that my sacrifice and yours might be united to the only sacrifice worth offering… so that my heart and yours may, like his, come to transcend human justice and be conformed to Divine Mercy.
I am grateful for five years as a priest. I am grateful for the love and support of the people here, of people like you in many places: real places, real people, and real occasions of grace. I am even grateful – sometimes at least – for the ways this priesthood has caused me suffering and trial, a small share in and configuration to the sufferings of the Lord. But most of all, I am grateful that He loved me enough save me, who loved you enough to use me to serve you… for that love made present in a physical human heart, and re-presented, re-manifest in every Eucharist that I am privileged to celebrate for my salvation and yours.
You, then, be grateful to God! Give no glory to me, but to God who works through and, often enough, despite me. If you would honor me, honor instead the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus by praying for me to not abuse or abandon the call given to me by that precious heart, a heart that wants nothing more than for us, all of us, to be united to him now and forever.