4th Sunday of Easter

29 April 2007

In the Gospel, Jesus speaks of those who follow him, and he says, “I give them eternal life”. He gives us, a share in his life with his Father and the Holy Spirit – a share in the glory he had with his Father before the world was made ( Jn 17:5 ). That is what Pope Benedict emphasises in his encyclical. The summary of the Christian life is this: “We have come to know and believe in the love God has for us ( I Jn 4:16, Deus Caritas Est, 1 ). Love means not just giving alms or giving attention; it means giving oneself to others. And that is what God does; God gives himself, his life, to us; God is love.

In this Mass, and in every Mass, the moment when God showed that love most clearly is present to us. God gave his Son, Jesus, to die for us; Jesus told us that he was going to his death for love of us: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends” ( Jn 15:13 ). Indeed St Paul points out that he went even further than that: “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us” ( Rom 5:8 ).

The Eucharist is a great prayer of thanksgiving – that is the very meaning of the word ‘Eucharist’. But if we are really grateful we have to take another step. Paul and Barnabas found that some of the people of Antioch were putting forward all sorts of reasons to reject the Gospel. They were rejecting it, presumably, because they thought it was asking too much of them. They were not prepared to make the effort and the sacrifice of really giving themselves. So St Paul says, perhaps with a little sarcasm, that they do not seem to think themselves worthy of eternal life!

In our celebration of the Eucharist we see ourselves as what we really are – a people gathered around the Lord in his death and resurrection, growing in unity with him and with one another. We are a community filled with the Good News and with the great variety of the Holy Spirit’s gifts.

If we are aware of what that means, it is very demanding. At the end of the Mass we are sent out. We are reminded that the Church, and that means every member of the Church, has a mission a mission to the whole world. But it is first of all a mission to the community to which we belong. If we are to bring the Good News to others, we must be trying to live it ourselves and trying to help one another to live it. We must be a community like the early Christians, of whom people said, “see how these Christians love one another”.

On this day of prayer for vocations we clearly see one obvious thing about our Christian community – it is not producing enough vocations to the priesthood and religious life. The members of St Joseph’s Young Priests Society do magnificent work in praying for vocations and in supporting vocations. The whole Church is greatly in your debt and I want to take the opportunity of thanking you for your enormous commitment and generosity.

But it is also important that we ask ourselves why God’s call to the priesthood does not seem to be heard in our country today. When I was a young student, there were about twelve hundred seminarians studying for the secular priesthood in Irish seminaries – many of them destined for various parts of the English speaking world. Now there are well short of one hundred! Already we are beginning to see the stresses that are created for fewer and older priests trying to do the work of two or three men – and this situation will get steadily worse in the coming years,

God still calls people to the priesthood and religious life. But in order for a young man to hear the call to the priesthood and to respond to it, he needs the encouragement of a community which appreciates the priesthood and which encourages him to regard that call as a great blessing. There are, of course, those who respond heroically without much encouragement from those around them; but the person who is called by God is entitled to hear that vocation in a community which is living up to its own call to be a light for the nations. He is entitled to hear that call from a community which is like the pagans of Antioch – very happy to hear the good news.

The mission of St Joseph’s Young Priests Society is based on appreciating the importance of the priesthood. The Society, and indeed every member of the Church has a crucial role and responsibility in helping to strengthen the whole community’s appreciation of the priesthood and in helping to heighten awareness of the very changed situation we have entered with such a dramatic decline in vocations – a decline which would have been unimaginable a few decades ago.

Jesus gives us eternal life. We are meant to live like people who have heard Good News – who know that God is leading us to springs of living water and that he will wipe away all tears from our eyes. If we are going to be able to live that life, and if we are to be a community that lives that life, we need to join in the great act of self-offering where we offer the work of human hands to be transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ. It is the priest who acts in the name of Christ in gathering that offering of God’s People to be united with the offering of Christ.

We need to celebrate and give thanks for what God has done for us and to realise that the Eucharist is both the beginning and goal of everything we do with him and in him. It is the priest, above all, who leads God’s people in thanks and celebration.

And we need to recall and to reflect on and to absorb the truth of the Good News. Paul and Barnabas went about telling people about Jesus. They often met opposition but many people were very happy to hear the word of God. It is the priest, in the Sunday Homily and in many other situations who has the task of teaching the meaning of what Christ has done for us.

In a community which was filled with an appreciation of the priesthood, many more people would, I am sure, be more able to hear and to respond to God’s call.

It is right that we pray for vocations, that we contribute to the education of seminarians, and to the ongoing education of priests, but the biggest challenge is not what we do. The big challenge is to look at the kind of community we are and to ask ourselves whether our community of faith is a context in which a young man would feel attracted and encouraged and supported to respond to the call to be a priest. Are we a community at which people could look and say: “the disciples were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit”? That is the challenge for all of us.

+Donal Murray
Bishop of Limerick