Vatican City, Jun 30, 2020 / 08:40 pm (CNA).- Last Saturday, June 27, many churches witnessed the ordinations of dozens of priests and deacons, in ceremonies that were far from typical. Even while some parts of the world “reopen” after the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, social distancing was required, and cameras provided live streaming so that family, friends and loved ones could participate by TV, tablet or smartphone.
On this occasion, I had the joy and honour of ordaining, in the Gesù Church in Rome, two Jesuit priests and eighteen deacons from all over the world—from Italy, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Ukraine, and Austria to Rwanda-Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Madagascar, Sri Lanka, China, Bangladesh and India—wearing masks and connecting online with parents, relatives, friends and fellow Jesuits. Physical presence was not possible as Italy slowly recovers from this health crisis; the borders are still closed and travel restrictions are still in place.
The following reflections expand upon the homily I pronounced just before the ordination of these twenty candidates for the priesthood and the diaconate.
Breath of life
As a priest or deacon “to be”, you may feel a bit incomplete because you cannot share this very important moment with your loved ones. You might feel anxious, too: we’re living in the unknown and in unchartered territories for the Church, for all of us. And as you prepare yourself for ordination, you might ask: what does this mean for me, right now and right here?
Perhaps the answer can be found on Easter evening, when the apostles had locked themselves into the upper room for fear of what was happening “outside”. (Even nowadays, our Church sometimes feels fearful and closed in on itself.) Suddenly Jesus becomes visible, audible, tangible among them. “Shalom!” is his first word, “Peace be with you!” He shows them his wounded hands and pierced side. These permanent signs of his Passion proclaim and prove God’s tenacious love. And then, amazingly, Jesus sends them out into the same world they were so afraid of.
How does he do this? With this tremendous gesture: he breathes on them. Just like in the beginning: God breathed his breath of life into Adam. By breathing on his disciples and giving them his Spirit, Jesus lifts them to a new order. That is, he ordains them as heralds of the Gospel “to the ends of the earth”, as it says in the book of Acts.
You are about to receive this deep and generous and transforming breath of life, the Spirit of the Father and the Son. You will be able to say, repeating Isaiah, “the spirit of the Lord is upon me”, to heal and to comfort, to liberate and to reconcile, to raise up and make glad. And to be a herald of the Gospel, a minister of reconciliation and of liberation, in the world of today and tomorrow, where everything seems to be constantly and rapidly new.
With your ordination just moments away, let me remind you that we are all witnessing a bigger moment now, where the whole Church and your family and friends, are encouraging you to choose the uphill path of the “new” rather than the downhill path of the “safe”.
Renewal is nothing new
Our Church has a long history and, from the beginning, it has coped with new conditions, for instance through its Councils. Vatican II proclaimed that the Church must consciously embrace the world. We must discern and “scrutinize the signs of the times”. But while discernment is part of the Jesuit life, style and training, it is not exclusively Jesuit property, nor is it a prerogative of the ordained.
Why is this so? Because of baptism. According to Vatican II, every member of the Church enjoys the dignity of having been baptized and therefore shares in the mission and ministry of the Church. Ordained ministry does not exhaust or monopolize this ministry, for it is the Church as a whole that is “ministerial” and “missionary”. All its members share in that responsibility. This expands the role of the laity — a work in progress, according to many engaged Christians. Today’s ministers are ordained to foster the active inclusion of God’s people in the life, mission and responsibilities of the Church.
Vatican II embraces the world as the privileged place of announcing the Good News. In doing so, it restores its priests to the world, inviting them to leave the comfort zones called “sacristies” where, like the disciples on the first Easter evening, they had been shut in for fear of what was happening “outside”. Now the world, with its problems and struggles, with its contradictions and its values, with its opportunities and obstacles, is essential to the service of those who will be ordained today.
The courage of witness
Do not expect a map of the unknown land ahead to which you are being sent. It is a daunting prospect to enter uncharted territories. As I said earlier, ministers of the Church need to have the courage of witness, to choose the uphill path of the “new” and not to take the downhill path of the “safe”. May you always have friends and family and companions in the Church to constantly ‘en-courage’ you, even if they can only be with you in spirit.
Keep in mind that discerning the meaning of Christ’s call to us today is a task of the whole Church, not of a chosen few. Don’t try to dominate or own this discernment; instead, accompany others and put yourselves at the service of the discernment of the whole Church.
In doing so, you will be participating in the synodal practice that is gradually growing in the Church. Let us try to walk together with ever greater enthusiasm. Your huge contribution depends on looking honestly and listening sincerely, without thinking that you already have the best answer or all the answers. Try to draw on many people and listen to many voices. However small or large your network is, you will find that it requires both humility and courage to recognize that one cannot do everything on one’s own.
Don’t expect it to be easy, don’t expect it to be without controversy, don’t expect to be rewarded, don’t expect to be liked by others, don’t expect that the critics will acknowledge your difficult struggles, don’t expect quick success. But be confident that you won’t be alone if you let others walk with you.
This is something to pray for, today and always. Ask God to help us see the world as Jesus does, especially in this very difficult time.
The Covid-19 pandemic is showing us the complexity and contradictions of our social and economic systems, where the gap between wealth and poverty is growing out of all proportion, and where so many feel abandoned and thrown away, excluded and unwanted.
Would Jesus not weep for the refugees and migrants who do not receive medical attention because they are “foreigners”, many of them crowded into irregular settlements, who have lost what little they already had and live today in despair? Would Jesus not see the indigenous peoples who are discriminated against for food aid, the prisoners who have been abandoned to the mercies of the virus, and the more than 3 billion poor people worldwide?
I cannot imagine Jesus waiting in an upper room or a sacristy; he would urge us to join him in the margins of the margins, where the courage of life and hope is most needed.
May we enlighten the world with the truth of the Gospel, and propose effective and genial solutions, not just to the present emergency, but to the enormous sufferings of God’s people and of our common home.
Pope Francis speaks often of joy: “The Joy of the Gospel” (Evangelii gaudium) and “Rejoice and be Glad” (Gaudete et exsultate) and “The Joy of Love” (Amoris laetitia). May you experience abundant grace, consolation and joy in carrying out the charge that you are about to accept in your ordination. Peace be with you!
Cardinal Michael Czerny, as a member of the Jesuit community, has worked in Canada, Latin America, Africa, and Rome, in the service of faith and the promotion of justice. Since 2017, he has been Under-Secretary of the Vatican’s Migrants and Refugees Section. In 2019 Pope Francis elevated him to cardinal. Card. Czerny is also a member of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.
[…]
Pope Leo and everyone else just need to relax. It was an accident. If you doubt that, you’re an anti-Semite.
If you doubt such sarcasm is antisemitic, you’re antisemitic.
WOW, 🤯 that was blunt!!! It’s possible to love the Jews but condemn the State of Israel! And many Jews do it!
Tony W. Arn’t you open to a dissenting opinion?
Because we know that shrapnel never causes collateral damage…
I can assure you that I am not an antisemite and having a missile strike a Catholic church full of innocent people is not acceptable. What kind of people have we become when we can shrug off this type of collateral damage as “an accident.”
Shrapnel does not a missile make.
How many churches were damaged by the allies during WW2? War is heck.
So Netanyahu called Pope Leo, eh?
Would it be too much trouble to let us know what Netanyahu said to him?
Yes, bineyman, it’s reported that a call was made but then tells us nothing of substance. A waste of precious ink.
I wonder why Leo XIV doesn’t ask Netanyahu to send his foreign minister to Castelgondolfo for a meeting with the leader of Hamas to end the ighting? Leo should invite the leader of Hamas.
“Fragments of a projectile”? Looks like a direct hit. The Church is completely destroyed. Well they’ve been itching to get rid of it since the war started. Never mind, There’s probably somebody sheltering there who might say something rude about Tel Aviv in the future. Prevention is better than cure, eh? Come to think of it, there’s probably people in Tierra del Fuego or Timbuctu who might also say rude things. Perhaps they need a few bombs too. Words are so hard to bear. Oh dear.
Yes, it was a direct hit from an explosive (i.e. shrapnel-filled) tank shell.
Israel is employing its usual diabolical sophistry (“the unaimed shrapnel did it!”) to excuse itself.
Diabolical?
If the problem that developed in Nigeria is because of a direct deliberate withholding of intelligence by Israelis, noticing it as it becomes apparent would not be from “hating Israel” or from being a “hate Israel firster”. If the US also has been withholding it doesn’t mean reacting against that is being hateful of the US.
I am skeptical of Israel’s explanation of the attack being an “accident”. They gave the same excuse, when they deliberately and intentionally attacked the USS Liberty and killed our sailors.
Why does the American media give so little coverage to these all
too frequent “mistakes” by the Israeli military forces”?
The Judophobia is strong in this comment section.
Pius XII did say we were all spiritual Semites, but he rejected Zionism, and Tel Aviv’s jurisdiction over Jerusalem, which remain the Church’s positions to this day. The Church began diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv a few decades ago (as did the Palestinians), but only as recognition of a political situation on the ground, not as a Jewish state per se. Catholics (unlike certain evangelical groups) ought to keep to the Church’s official, constant position on this issue; it’s based on faith, not politics. The Church has supported a two state solution (outside Jerusalem) ever since it became an option. The continuation of the war in Gaza for years after Gaza’s foray outside itself was defeated, has only one purpose – to make a two state solution impossible. But a just war does not entitle even an aggrieved party to annihilate another nation by ethnic cleansing.
But the main question the Christian West should be asking is: what about our sacred places? What about the Christians in Palestine? That should be the focus of our tears and anger.
I do not particularly care to embrace the political positions of any pontiff, as they are far outside the realm of his infallibility and are frequently outside the realm of good sense.
(Incidentally, you are thinking of Pius XI, not XII, as the pontiff of “spiritually we are all Semites”.)
In a word, “the Church’s” (really “the Vatican’s”) position on Zionism and the two-state solution and jurisdiction over Jerusalem is not authoritative for Catholics and enjoys all the sense of the Vatican’s position on the United Nations. A two-state solution was feasible eighty years ago and was rejected by the Arabs. The idea that it will work now is pure geopolitical folly. Israel has a better historical claim to Judea and Samaria than it does to the Mediterranean coast, and any Palestinian state would unquestionably be either a state sponsor of terror or ineffective in stopping it.
You parrot the common blood libel of “ethnic cleansing” (and it is blood libel), blissfully ignorant of the requirements of urban warfare and apparently of the large Arab Israeli population.
The war in Gaza is to destroy one of the most notorious terror organizations in the world. It is every bit as jest as the Allied crusade against Nazism or Japanese militarism.
It is furthermore fallacious to claim that the war in Gaza has or will make a two-state solution impossible. Hamas made it impossible by showing what a Palestinian state would do.
Thank you Spiritual Semite for stating the facts of the matter with brevity and clarity. Hamas, by their shocking actions over many years now have clearly demonstrated with hideous clarity that the ‘2 state solution’ is an absolute impossibility. A lot of contributors to this thread need to ask themselves why it is that to this day no Arab state has taken in a single refugee from Gaza.
Good post, Mr. Cervantes, an excellent summary.
There is no ethnic cleansing taking place, and it’s inappropriate to make that false accusation. The Palestinians have consistently rejected a two state solution, so their situation is largely their own doing.
It almost never fails.
Let’s not call it a phobia, but what it is: hatred.
It’s a disorder I believe. Scapegoats provide a rationalization for our failures. It’s easier to blame others for life’s disappointments and our own weaknesses.
I had a family member who ended up like that. Everything wrong with the world became the fault of Jews and immigrants. It’s sad.
I really hope the pope will also urge the release of Israeli civilian hostages.
I stand corrected. Saying a two-state solution is impossible because of the regime in the smaller part of Palestine, Gaza, is Luke saying that a German star was forever impossible because of the Nazi regime. Hamas was defeated is conventional warfare a few weeks into the conflict. That it is still able to conduct guerilla warfare is no teaspn the ethnically cleanse Gaza. If you affirm this, then you affirm that the English would have been right to ethnically cleanse the Irish, who continued for many generations to conduct rather deadly guerilla campaigns against the occupation and its local allies. These campaigns repeatedly killed far more than the 400 civilians and 300 soldiers Hamas did three years ago, and which you seem to consider a kind of Year Zero.
The Catholic Church’s position on Zionism and Zionism’s jurisdiction over Jerusalem isn’t politics, as you claim. Catholicism can’t identify the OT people with a Mitteleuropan political movement based on secular nationalism. Nor would it identify the OT state with contemporary Orthodox Judaism. The only claim Tel Aviv can have is its might is right notion, which the Vatican accommodates with its support for a two-state solution. This solution is politics, yes, and leaves untouched the Church’s position on Zionism and jurisdiction over Jerusalem.
Your second paragraph is risible bunk. The Church has no authority whatever to declaim on a geopolitical solution to the Zionist question. If anything, she can only affirm the special relationship of the Jewish nation to its land.
Your first paragraph repeats again the malicious lie that Israel is interested in “ethnically cleansing” Gaza, then compounds this with the military nonsense that counterinsurgency must under my view necessitate or justify such “cleansing.” This is preposterous. Military operations can and do, however, often necessitate urban warfare to uproot an entrenched enemy. You ought to familiarize yourself with military history.
“Catholicism can’t identify the OT people with a Mitteleuropan political movement based on secular nationalism. Nor would it identify the OT state with contemporary Orthodox Judaism. ”
**********
I don’t think Israelis are over-concerned about what some Catholics may believe about this. Attempting to assimilate & placate the prevailing class is what doomed many German Jews. It was a fool’s errand. Jews have always been the perfect scapegoat & Israel has been the only place they can feel relatively safe. Even there they still have to watch their backs.
The discussion with the other writer only concerned Catholic views on the issue. We are allowed to have views and discuss them? Thanks there.
The Vatican is a sovereign state which recognise other states if it chooses.The Church can and must try to intervene in secular affairs when higher principles are seriously violated by civil societies. It always has.
Netanyahoo’s Deight at Trump’s proposal to deport Gaza’s population only confirmed what his policies on the ground are doing. Do you agree that the removal of Gaza’s population to other countries would be immoral?
I can’t tell who your question is addressed to Mr Cervantes, but I personally believe Gaza should be completely evacuated. It’s unsafe for human habitation. To keep civilians there in harm’s way is immoral. But every civilian death scores Hamas propaganda points so they have no incentive to encourage the people to leave.
It’s unlikely any people would consent to being ethnically cleansed. The bravery of the Palestinians is incredible.
Jews have survived a very long history of attempts to exterminate and “ethnically cleanse ” them. They’ve know the reality of those words. Not the political invention.
Gaza needs to be evacuated ASAP and the hostages released. But Hamas has no incentive to do that because their sources of revenue would dry up.
The incredibly brave Palestinians of Gaza don’t need to be ethnically cleansed.
To call the Palestinians “brave” is, in the main, a despicable misuse of the word. The true bravery lies with the Israeli people and their righteous war.
The voluntary emigration of Palestinians from Gaza is certainly not immoral and would be excellent politics.
If you seriously believe their exit would be voluntary, there’s little point discussing the issue. But do you believe the removal of Gaza’s population to other countries would be moral? Last chance to give a straight answer.