Holy Thursday, March 28, 2024 – Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-15

I am sure many of you know what rubrics are. They’re the instructions in red print that are printed in my prayer book in between all the sections of text to be read or prayed. They tell you what to do. The rubrics for this Mass say, “The priest shall preach a short homily on the institution of the Eucharist, the Sacrament of Holy Orders, and Christian charity.” That’s why I got the chair. Because a short homily on those three things should last six or seven hours at least.

And I said to myself, what would I do if I were invited to speak to a group of young men about to be ordained priests? That should cover the Sacrament of Holy Orders. And, since a lot of what I am going to say has to do with the Mass, that would cover the Institution of the Blessed Sacrament. And, hopefully, what I say would be said in charity and would be received with charity.

The first thing I would say is, “Learn to say no without feeling like you’ve won something. But, more importantly, learn to say yes without condescension. When you preach, never preach, never ever preach about sin and sinners bbecause almost everybody who comes to church feels oppressed and guilty already. They feel oppressed and guilty about a lot of things. Some of them are their fault. Some of them are not. But all day long, all week long, they are made to feel guilty about something. And, when we preach about sin and sinners, we simply make them feel more guilty. And that causes them to leave the celebration either feeling angry or feeling depressed and more burdened. What you need to preach about is not sin, but evil. We are all oppressed by evil. It’s all around us. In the places where we live. In the places where we work.  Evil is one of the things that oppresses us. And, if we need to speak, we should speak about evil and the fact that Christ died because of human evil, and he created the Church in order to struggle against human evil. That way of viewing things elevates people and makes them feel that they have a task to perform and the grace to perform it. 

The other thing to realize about saying Mass, I would tell them, is that it’s not about the red print. It’s about the black print. Yeah, I know, you’re gonna spend a whole year just studying liturgy - all the seven sacraments and how they are performed - and you’ll want to fuss over the right kind of chasuble, the right kind of alb, and the right kind of music, and all that kind of stuff. And, to a certain extent, that might be important, but the people don’t care about all of that. If you have people in your congregation that care about that beware of that because they could do you and themselves a lot of harm. What the average Catholic cares about is that their Church looks pretty, their priest looks pretty, their worship services look pretty, their music is pretty. If they get that, that’s what they came for. 

Now how do you do that? Well, there’s a principle behind all the other principles that stands behind all the red print and all the black print. The Mass is the Supper of the Lord every time that it is celebrated. He is the host. The people in Church are his guests. What you want to be is a good host. A good host never embarrasses his guests, is never mean to them or niggardly toward them. Never withholds, but always gives. You are, in a word, the maitre'd or the master of ceremonies at the Supper of the Lord. That’s how you celebrate Mass properly. The rest of it is only a footnote.

And finally, I would say to them, “Learn to be present.” Learn to be present.
When we were in the seminary, we were given a one semester course in psychology. One semester doesn’t teach you anything about the complexity of the human person. I think the course was given to us to make sure we didn’t damage anybody by their office visits and wind up in a terrible lawsuit. But I remember the professor very well. He was a Brother. I forget which order. They’re the Brothers who run one of our universities in Westchester County. And he said, “Look, guys. It doesn’t matter what you say to people at an important time in their life. What matters is that you be there for them.” He said, “I’ll give you an example.” He says, “I worked at a place one time that had a pastor and every time he went to a wake he looked in the coffin, he’d say a little prayer, he’d put his arm on the shoulder of the widow - always seemed to be a widow - and he’d say in his best Irish brogue, ‘Ahh these things happen, Mary.’” He said, “Now, when you examine those words, they mean nothing. ‘These things happen, Mary,’ but, from a psychological point of view, what are you doing? You are breaking through the wall of denial that prevents the person from starting off on the long hard journey of grief. You are asserting that the loved one is really dead. ‘These things happen.’ But you’re also asserting that nobody is victimizing this poor person who has survived, but that every human being, many times, has this happen to them. ‘These things happen.’ And that’s all you need to do, is say something like that to let the person know that they are not alone in their grief. The job of the priest, when he is not in the confessional and not on the altar, is to show up for the things that matter to people. Their weddings and wakes. Their graduations. Their first communions. To show up, and be a quiet presence, and say something non-committal that makes them feel like they’ve been seen and heard.”

And it seems to me that if I had followed these four pieces of advice, I would’ve been a much better priest.