Most Reverend Vincent Long Van Nguyen OFM Conv DD STL, Bishop of Parramatta
Homily for the 2025 Chrism Mass
Readings: Isaiah 61:1-9; Apocalypse 1:5-8; Luke 4:16-21
The Church that epitomizes God’s deep pathos for others.
My dear people, colleagues in ministry and in consecrated life,
It is with great joy, hope and trust that we have gathered as the living Body of Christ, witness to the Gospel and vehicle of God’s enduring love, healing, outreach and reconciliation for the world. Despite many challenges we face, we are emboldened to follow the footsteps of our Lord and carry on his mission. The Church at its best is not necessarily the Church having its hands on the levers of temporal power as in the days of Christendom. Rather, the Church is at its best when it epitomizes God’s loving presence, deep pathos and unwavering solidarity with the suffering.
Many Catholics might regret the loss of the Church’s wealth, status and power in the post-Christian society. But if this loss makes us more aligned to the self-emptying Christ, then we can say with St Paul “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus.” We are inspired by the early Christian community which was small, poor and persecuted. In the face of incredible odds, they showed to the world what it was like to be a force of leaven. Against the prevalent system of competition, greed and zero-sum game, they offered the alternative relational paradigm -modelled on Jesus’ teaching and example.
The Word of God this evening speaks of a God who stands on the side of wounded humanity. In Jesus the Anointed One, God embraces, heals, restores, dignifies and honours the downtrodden. In him, we are called to be an ecclesial community that is the sacrament of God’s compassion and care for the least and the last.
In the first reading, Isaiah reminds his people in exile that the promise of restoration was being fulfilled despite appearances to the contrary. The Anointed of God would bring honour to the dishonoured, a garland instead of ashes and oil of gladness instead of mourning. He would heal the broken-hearted, comfort the sorowful and free the captives. But far from making Israel great again as in the days of King David, Isaiah speaks of building a new society rooted in justice, care for the weak and solidarity with the vulnerable. Using poetic metaphors, such as wolves lying with lambs or mountains being laid low, Isaiah calls them to change and conversion. For Isaiah, the future of God’s chosen people does not lie in the old things like the temple, the temple-based priesthood, festivals, land, monarchy etc… which had been taken away from them. Rather, it is to become an alternative society under God’s rule, a community of hospitality, compassion, justice and neighbourliness.
This is a sobering and poignant lesson for the Church today, too. We have much to learn from our ancestors in faith. The Church is first and foremost the embodiment of God who hears the cry of the poor. We must learn to be once again the Church that binds up broken hearts, proclaims freedom to captives and comforts all those who mourn.
In the Gospel, Jesus takes up the message of Isaiah and points to himself as the personification of God’s outreach to the marginalized. The blind, the deaf, the lame and the poor are categories of people who are regarded as the most vulnerable in ancient Israel. By taking up their cause, Jesus enacts the program of reconciliation through which God would lift up the downtrodden and empower them to be the stakeholders of the new world.
Consequently, empowering the powerless is the business model of the community of disciples. We have no other goal worth achieving more than loving the unloved, serving the underserved, seeking out the lost and forgotten. In the world where might is right, where the strong exert their power and influence, the Church is on the same side of the kind of people Jesus himself made into the object of his concern.
Dear friends,
Pope Francis has called us to be ‘Pilgrims of Hope’ in this Jubilee Year. It is an invitation to renew our hope and to be the bearer of the hope we share. Only by caring for one another, for the most vulnerable and for all creation, can we harness the energy of love and embody the incarnate God. The whole Judeo-Christian enterprise is pivoted to the belief of the God who listens to the cry of the poor and the cry of the earth. Wherever people groan, wherever creation groans, there the community of the Gospel is meant to be with a message and a ministry of liberation.
Tonight, we consecrate the sacred oils, which will be used for the ministry to those in need. In this way, we enact God’s intent to heal, restore, strengthen and transform their lives. As priestly people, we are sent to consecrate and shape the world in accordance with the divine mandate. We cannot live our consecration fully, especially as ordained ministers, without getting ourselves immersed in the messiness of life, without going out and embracing those at the periphery. Our consecration pushes us out into the deep.
Let us commit ourselves to be the Church that strengthens the weak, heals the broken-hearted, lifts up the fallen and invites all to the communion of love. May we become God’s priestly and holy people, anointed to serve. May we learn to be once again the Church that accompanies all on the journey towards the fulness of life.
