+Leopoldo González González
Archbishop of Acapulco
Homily at the Ordination to the Priesthood of Deacon Elmer Peláez Epitacio, Consolata Missionary
San Miguel Arcángel Parish, Xochistlahuaca, Guerrero, México
February 13, 2021
“It was the most beautiful day of my life“, is how Blessed Joseph Allamano, Founder of the Consolata Missionaries, to whose Congregation Father Elmer belongs, described the day of his ordination to the priesthood. He said this not on the day of his ordination, on the spur of emotion, but after many years in which, every day, he had sought to fulfill the will of God.
P. Elmer, may this also be for you the most beautiful day of your life! Your people would have liked to live it with the rejoicing of their great celebrations. But in these days [because of the Pandemic restrictions], fraternal love asks us not to congregate in multitudes, nor to celebrate parties or get-together, in order to care for and respect our own health and that of others. However, this does not diminish the beauty of the day of your ordination; rather, there is a very beautiful trait of fraternity that frames it.
What is the root of the beauty of the day of our ordination to the priesthood?
+ The first reading tells us of Abraham’s vocation: “Leave your country, your relatives and your father’s house, and go to the land that I will show you”. God gave a new direction to his life, but above all he gave a new dimension to his person, he changed his name: no longer Abram, but Abraham, father of many peoples.
Years ago you also heard the Lord’s call to the priesthood and you left your home to discern if the Lord was really calling you and to prepare yourself to respond. Today you have clearly heard Jesus’ call and with great sincerity you have answered: “Here I am”. Like Abraham, the Lord not only gives a new direction to your life, but he gives a new dimension to your person, he transforms you. Through the action of the Holy Spirit in the ordination to the priesthood, we are made a living image of Christ Jesus, Good Shepherd, Head and guide of the Church. To be a transparency of Christ Jesus the Good Shepherd, to be a priest of Jesus will be the axis around which our daily thinking, speaking and acting must revolve.
It is a call to something very beautiful. You will make the Lord Jesus present, but not simply by remembering Him. The Lord Jesus, the Good Shepherd, will be present in you. Pope Benedict XVI told us: “The priesthood is not simply an office, but a sacrament: God uses man with his limitations to be, through him, present among men and women and to act in their favor. This audacity of God, who abandons himself into the hands of human beings; who, while knowing our weaknesses, considers men capable of acting and standing in His stead; this audacity of God is truly the greatest greatness hidden in the word ‘priesthood’… We must awaken in ourselves the joy that God is so close to us as well as the gratitude for the fact that He entrusts Himself to our weakness”. This grace of God is the source of the beauty of the day of our priestly ordination.
+ The Gospel page we have heard presents us with Jesus about to live his Passover. He considers what his life has been. The Father has given him power over all people in order to give them eternal life. “Eternal life consists in this, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, the one sent by you… I have made you known… Now they know with absolute certainty that I came from you and they have believed that it was you who sent me”. His whole life has been to fulfill the will of the Father: to offer eternal life to all humanity.
As living images of Christ Jesus, the Good Shepherd, this is also our mission, that they may know God our Father and Jesus Christ, the one sent to them, so that they may have life and life in abundance, eternal life. But how can people be certain that we come from God, that it is He who has sent us? When our actions cannot be understood except from the perspective of Jesus, because they are Jesus’ actions.
“We need – says Blessed Joseph Allamano – to do all things as our Lord did when He was on this earth.” And he points out some virtues of Jesus. Let’s look at just three now:
= Jesus, example of prayer: “Jesus spent whole nights praying, kneeling down, so that, in imitating him, we too might live as he lived.”
In a few minutes you will be asked this question: “Do you want to plead, together with us, for the divine mercy on behalf of the people entrusted to you, fulfilling the command to pray continually?” This is the first service people are entitled to. To pray for them. First thing in the morning, what are you going to do? To pray for the people.
= Jesus, example of kindness: “‘Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart’. Therefore, one should not only pray, but imitate Jesus.” Addressing the missionaries, Blessed Joseph remarked, “Experience shows that our missionaries do good to the extent that they are kind.”
In a little while, your hands will be anointed with Sacred Chrism. The hands seem to be the clearest symbol of the ability to dominate, of the desire to possess. The hands of the priest are anointed to be the hands of Jesus, who “came not to be served but to serve”, who goes among his people doing good, healing the sick and curing those oppressed by evil, concerned especially for those for whom no one shows concern and interest. Pope Francis has invited us to go to the existential peripheries, to those whom society has excluded, to those who are confronted with the extreme situations of human existence… This is one of the most human aspects of priestly celibacy. If we renounce marriage and a family, and freely promise to live celibate chastity, it is not in order not to love, but to love like Jesus, without exclusivity, each one excluding nobody, and in a special way those who are most inclined to feel they are loved by no one.
= Jesus, example of detachment from his own will. “Our Lord Jesus Christ, what has he come to do if not the will of his Eternal Father?” (Blessed Joseph Allamano). Soon you will be asked: “Do you promise obedience and respect to the diocesan Bishop and to your legitimate Superior?” Jesus “although he was the Son, learned to obey by suffering and, having reached perfection, became the cause of salvation for all those who obey him”. In this is our promise of obedience framed. It is the surrender of one’s own life. The whole life as a promise, on the day of ordination; day by day, in the daily service of our ministry. It does not focus only on offices and assignments, on diocesan or Congregational programs and directives. Yes also on that, and yet on much more: it is to offer ourselves every day, like Jesus, in the fulfillment of the will of the Father who wants the whole world to be saved, and thus to be the transparency of Jesus, the Good Shepherd.
+ In the second reading we heard: “Since we have in Jesus, the Son of God, an eminent High Priest who has entered heaven, let us hold fast to the faith we profess.”
May the Lord give you many years in the priestly ministry, all the years of your life until he calls you to eternal life in heaven. How can we look ahead with confidence? Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, our High Priest, the author and perfecter of our faith. In him we will find grace at the right time. The rite of the laying on of hands is central to priestly ordination. To lay hands on something expresses ownership, as when as children in the baptismal font we laid our hand on a coin or when the prize-pot breaks we lay our hand on a fruit. For a new beginning, you belong to God. And God’s people in approaching us expect to meet a man of God.
But the laying on of hands expresses also care. God says to us, “You are mine. And no one will snatch you out of the Father’s hands.” That is our reassurance.
We entrust you to the care of the Virgin Mary, Our Lady Consolata, of St. Joseph in his Jubilee Year and of Blessed Joseph Allamano whom God made a witness of his love, an educator of priests, and a father of missionaries for the evangelization of all peoples. May his example inspire us to seek the Lord above all else and work for the good of all. Amen.
+Leopoldo González González
Archbishop of Acapulco
Mexico
(our translation from the original in Spanish)