Deacon Martin’s First Homily at All Saints
Palm Sunday (5:30 pm Mass Sat)
In today’s reading of the Passion, Jesus reveals for us the authentic vocation for human beings created in the image and likeness of God. Jesus reveals our vocation to love. This is the deepest meaning of life as human beings.
Twelve years ago, I had the privilege of attending Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Square, celebrated by Pope John Paul II. It was a deeply moving experience. I have a picture I took when he processed just several feet in front of me. In the picture, he is looking straight at me as he is giving his blessing. Twelve years later, today, on Palm Sunday, I stand before you to proclaim the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ as a newly ordained deacon. Twelve years ago, I had my own business, took winter vacations on the beaches of Florida and the Caribbean and sought happiness in life as many people do. But I never found what I was looking for as I sought to make myself happy. This morning, I found what I was looking for as I made a sincere gift of myself to the Church, as a deacon in transition to the priesthood.
As human beings created in the image and likeness of God who is himself love, we all have a vocation to love. Some discover their vocation to love in marriage. I have found my vocation to love by giving myself to the Church as a celibate deacon in transition to becoming a priest. In a sense, yesterday, at my deacon ordination, I married the Church, so that I might be completely devoted to her service one day as a priest.
Jesus, the bridegroom of the Church, pours out his life for his beloved. Humankind has forgotten and thrown away its vocation to love, preferring sin and selfishness to authentic love. But Jesus, the new Adam, has purchased the redemption of his bride the Church with his own blood. In this, Jesus fully reveals to us what it means to be human – he makes our supreme calling clear.[1] And this calling awakens in us our true humanity – our vocation to love.
In His passion, Jesus shows us that the true meaning of human life is found in pouring out our lives in love and service for others. This is why we have been created – for selfless love in the image and likeness of God who himself is love. For, “God in His deepest mystery is not a solitude, but a family”[2] of love. The Father pours Himself out in love and that outpouring of love is the Son. The Son pours himself out in a loving return to the Father of all that He is. The Son and Father love each other so selflessly, that the living love between them is the Person of the Holy Spirit.
Christ reveals to us the love of God so that we too might come to discover our vocation to love – to lay down our lives for one another. For if we have nothing – or no one – in our lives worth giving ourselves to – worth dying for – then we have nothing worth truly living for.[3] For life to have meaning we have to find something greater than ourselves to which to give ourselves. For only in giving ourselves away in love do we find out who we were created to be – who we really are. Jesus, in his example of self-giving, sacrificial love, reveals to us who we really are and the meaning of our lives. The true meaning of human life lies in the vocation to love – a vocation that is only found completely in making a sincere gift of self.[4] What Jesus reveals to us is that our vocation as human beings is found in self-giving sacrificial love. This vocation to give ourselves in love reflects the image of God which our Creator desired to impress upon humankind. God calls us to resemble him precisely to the extent that we are open to love.[5] This is the deepest meaning of what it means to be human.
There is a catch however… Those to whom we give ourselves in love will crucify us. Only those who love, will experience the deepest pain of life – the kind of pain that can only be inflicted by one to whom you give yourself completely in love. Husband and wives will hurt each other deeply only to the extent that they have loved each other… Please understand here, that I am not talking about any abusive type of situation, but just every day life. They tell us in the seminary…, that as a priest, you can walk on water, feed the five thousand, cure the lame and raise the dead – but in the end people will still crucify you. Self-giving love, which is the essence of what it means to be human, does not come without a cost. It cost Jesus his life.
The Good News however is that after the crucifixion on Good Friday comes the Resurrection. If we stay close to Jesus, he will bring us into in the grace of the resurrection. Our love will be strengthened and empowered by his love. If we ask him, he will help us to love as we ought. But there can be no Easter Sunday without Good Friday. The Vocation to Love is not easy. But it is worth it. It is the only thing that gives real meaning to life. Understanding and embracing our vocation to selfless, self-giving love, in imitation of Jesus on the cross, is the remedy to the difficulties we face in both the shortage of healthy vocations to marriage and the priesthood. Single people will not find meaning in their lives by living simply for themselves. For we only find meaning in living for others. Our vocations to marriage will not be healed unless they are imbued with the selfless, self-giving, sacrificial love of Christ. And the same holds true for vocations to the priesthood.
[1] Cf. Gaudium et Spes, 22.
[2] John Paul II.
[3] “Where there is no longer anything worth dying for, even life itself is no longer worth living.” Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Called to Communion, trans. Adrian Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996), 155.
[4] Cf. Pope Benedict XVI, Address to Members of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family on the XXVth Anniversary of its Foundation, Thursday, 11 May 2006..
[5] Ibid.