Transcript

The sacraments of marriage and holy orders are fundamentally about mission.

Though differing in scope and nature, both are critical to the life of a church, and indeed, the world.

In the eyes of God, it is not merely the individual, but rather, the married couple who are the primary foundation of human society.

Those who receive the sacrament of marriage do not simply express a romantic inclination to each other, but also testify to their belief that God has called them to this love, and entrusted it to them as their primary mission in life.

While marriage itself is a sign of God's love, there is an even more mysterious sign.

Through the sacrament of holy orders, men are conformed in their very souls to the person of Christ.

This identity is not meant to serve the recipient of the sacrament as a source of self-aggrandizement, but instead, it's meant to serve the mission of the church.

From the earliest days, the church has seen fit that priests should live as Jesus did, in single-minded devotion to God and the church, so that when people see and come to know the priest, they might see and come to know Christ.

So we come finally to the two great sacraments of mission or vocation.

So the first three, initiation, second two, healing, when the relationship with the Lord is broken, and then finally, this is the go, now go on mission.

And here's matrimony and holy orders, the two basic forms, if you want, of how the baptized are active spiritually in the world.

So first of all, let's look at marriage, at matrimony.

When I was doing full-time parish work, uh, many years ago, I did a lot of weddings.

We had, I think, 150 or so weddings a year.

So typically, on the weekend, I'd have, you know, one or two weddings.

So I gave a lot of wedding homilies.

And in one of them, kind of a standard homily, I, I used the story from O. Henry, remember, called the Gift of the Magi.

A lot of us read that in high school.

Remember the narrative there is, it's about a young couple, newly married, deeply in love, but very poor.

The only thing of value that the young lady has is her beautiful, uh, flowing hair.

The only thing of value the young man has is this beautiful, uh, decorative watch that his grandfather had given him.

So Christmas is approaching.

Each wants to give the other a special gift.

And so the woman cuts off her beautiful hair, and with the hi- the, she sells it and buys a, a decorative chain for the watch.

But the young man sold the watch to buy a beautiful decorative comb for his wife's hair.

And so Christmas Day arrives, they exchange their now pointless gifts, and they weep, but not because the gifts are pointless.

In fact, the gifts powerfully express their love for each other.

I told that story because it speaks to me of what married love is like.

When two people marry, they say, Look, my life is not about me anymore.

It's about you.

I'm not the center of my life.

You're the center of my life.

I live for you, not for me.

And in that mutual self-gift, that mutual surrender, we have the very essence of married love.

Now, the church didn't invent marriage.

I mean, marriage is a natural institution.

You can find it in every culture in the world, goes all the way back to the beginning of the human race.

But what the church did was it elevated this naturally beautiful institution and made it evocative of something transcendent.

Saint Paul put it this way.

Married love speaks of Christ's love for his bride, the church.

That beautiful imagery of bride and bridegroom, it runs right through the Bible, and Paul sees it with great clarity.

This naturally beautiful institution of self-gift is now elevated, sacramentalized, and that's what the sacrament of marriage is about.

Now, I made reference to the Bible, and it's true.

The Bible is filled with the imagery of marriage.

In fact, it's bookended.

It begins and ends, in many ways, with marriage.

The Bible begins with the story of the creation of, of Adam and Eve, the first couple.

It ends with the wedding banquet of the Lamb.

There's the Christ, the bridegroom, and the church, the bride.

The whole Bible is bookended by the great image of married love.

And then look throughout the Bible.

How often the covenant between God and his people is expressed as a marriage covenant.

Now, Jesus himself is a kind of marriage, isn't he?

The coming together in him of divinity and humanity constitutes a sort of marriage of nature and supernature.

Christ himself, a bride and bridegroom meeting.The Bible holds up marriage as perhaps the most powerful symbol there is for the divine love.

How does God love his people?

The way a husband loves his wife, the way a wife loves her husband.

Yes, even to the point of death.

Now, can I share this everybody?

The most powerful marriage image in the New Testament is the image of Christ crucified.

What do we see there?

But Christ, the bridegroom, pouring out his life Remember the night before, he had said, This is my body given for you.

This is my blood shed for you.

Christ, the bridegroom, giving his whole life, body, blood, and soul for his bride, the Church.

What we are meant to see in a young bride and groom marrying each other, giving each other their mutual consent, living one for the other, we're meant to see in them a sign of Christ's love for his Church.

You know, in some ways, y- you could take any one of the sacraments and say, Oh, that's the most important one.

You could make an argument for it.

And here's my argument for marriage as the most important sacrament.

I don't know a better symbol of God's love for his people than, than marriage.

That's why when we send this, this couple forth and say, you know, Go now out into the world, they're going out into the world as a very, very important sign of what God's love looks like.

Do you see now why the Church speaks in season and out, when it's popular and when it's not, of the indissolubility of marriage?

Now, I'm not gonna get into all the great debates around annulment and all that.

That's for another day, but that its basic stance is marriage is indissoluble.

Why?

Because what God has joined for his sacramental purposes, we must not divide.

As, as intense as their love is for each other, that's what God's love is like.

Hence the indissolubility of marriage.

You know what I was, uh, doing my parish work full-time and, and talked to a lot of engaged couples preparing them for marriage.

I would often ask them at the end of the session, Well, I mean, finally, why do you guys want to get married in church?

And after some hemming and hawing, they'd usually say some version of, Well, because we love each other.

And I would say, I'm delighted you love each other, but that's not good enough reason to be married in church.

Again, marriage is a natural institution, right?

I mean, you can celebrate your mutual love in all kinds of other settings.

You get married in church when you're convinced that God has brought you together precisely so that your mutual love would be a sacramental sign to the world of his indissoluble love for his Church.

When you're ready to make that commitment, then you come to church, because now we're ready to sacramentalize this naturally beautiful institution.

Where does a wedding take place typically in the Catholic, uh, view of things?

Typically and appropriately at the mass.

Now, why?

Just 'cause we're trying to be difficult?

No.

Because- the mass is the wedding banquet of the Lamb.

What is represented at the mass but the sacrifice of Jesus?

It, it's precisely Jesus giving his body and blood for all of us on the cross.

That's what's represented at the mass.

And therefore, it's entirely appropriate that this great symbol of that love should be contextualized by the liturgy.

That's why it happens there.

Here's something I've always loved and, and try to emphasize with married couples.

Marriage is very unique in this measure, that the bride and groom don't so much receive a sacrament from the priest or the bishop.

So in baptism, it's the priest baptizes.

In the Eucharist the priest confects the Blessed Sacrament and distributes it, et cetera.

But in marriage, the couple, by their mutual consent, bestow the sacrament upon each other.

The priest or bishop is there, or the deacon, to witness this on behalf of the Church.

It's not so much that the priest or bishop gives.

He witnesses what the couple give to each other, because in that mutual consent, the sacrament consists.

What are the effects of marriage?

What are the consequences of it?

Here's the catechism.

The first effect of the grace of the sacrament is a strengthening of the love between the spouses, a fortifying of their properly indissoluble unity.

First effect is that they grow even more intensely in love.

Think of it this way.

The ultimate purpose of a husband vis-a-vis his wife is to help her become a saint.

The ultimate purpose of a wife vis-a-vis her husband is to help him become a saint.

That's it.

That's what their mutual self-gift is all about .

the fortifying of their love.

That's the first effect.

Second effect is help in the raising up and educating of children.

The grace to become, this is, uh, Pope Francis, A school of virtue for them.

I love this from Gaudiem et Spes, the great statement of Vatican II describing marriage.

Listen.

By its very nature, the institution of marriage and conjugal love are ordered towards a procreation and education of children.

Such a goal constituting its crowning.

So the second great effect of marriage is the giving rise to children and educating them in this great school of virtue.

Again, that's Pope Francis.

Read, um, in, uh, Amoris Laetitia the chapters on this idea.

What are the husband and wife meant to do?

They're meant to create a kind of school in which their children are schooled in the ways of Christ, to learn the virtues of the Gospel.

Do you know in a way, I said the, the husband is meant to make his wife a saint, the wife to make her husband a saint?

Well, that's the whole purpose of the parents now, is to make their children saints.

Saint John Paul II said that every family is an ecclesiolae.

That's Latin for, for little church.

Every family, the husband, wife, and kids, is meant to be a little church, a place where they grow in holiness, where they help to make each other saints.

That's the second great effect of marriage.

I wonder if I can give here a last word to, uh, to Fulton Sheen.

Maybe some in the room remember a book came out in the 1950s.

My parents had it.

I remember seeing it in the house when I was growing up, called Three To Get Married.

Remember that book?

Fulton Sheen there is relying actually on, on Saint Thomas Aquinas, and behind Aquinas, Aristotle.

Because Aristotle said long ago, A friendship will grow and intensify precisely in the measure that the friends fall in love not so much with each other, as with a transcendent third.

Now, what did he mean?

He meant if two friends have come together, they like each other, but their friendship will really intensify when together they fall in love with their country, or with philosophy, or with the truth, or with some value that goes beyond them, when together they look to a transcendent third, the paradox is, that's when they grow deeper in love with each other.

If they're just focused on each other, Aristotle said long ago, they'll tend to grow simply into a kind of shared egotism.

Well, Fulton Sheen took that very image, three to get married, the husband, the wife, and Christ.

When together they fall in love with the transcendent third, when together they fall in love with Christ, then their intimacy intensifies.

And that maybe is the profoundest effect of the sacrament of matrimony.

Now, can I move right from that, everybody, into the last sacrament we'll look at, the second of the great sacraments of mission and vocation?

I'm talking now about holy orders.

You know, I spent a lot of my priesthood in seminary work.

So I did full-time parish work, and then I was sent to study, and then I, I taught for many years in the seminary.

I eventually became rector of Mundelein Seminary.

So forming young men for the priesthood was a major preoccupation of mine.

Doing it, may I say, during a time of scandal.

And much of the time that I was involved in this work, we were under the, the cloud of the, the clergy of scandals.

Um, made that work interesting, let's say.

I, I always told my students studying for the priesthood, The most beautiful title you'll ever have is Father.

People call you Father right away.

In fact, I'll tell you the truth, I kind of miss it, a- as a bishop.

I don't c- people don't call me Father anymore.

They call me Bishop, which is fine.

But, uh, I miss that title of Father.

Who's a father?

A father's a life giver, right?

In the biological order and the psychological order.

A priest is a life giver in the spiritual order.

Now listen, what are the means by which he gives life?

Exactly what I've been talking about all this morning.

The sacraments are the means by which a spiritual father gives life.

There's finally a sacrament to equip and ordain certain people to give the other sacraments, and that's holy orders.

It gives rise to spiritual fathers, spiritual life givers.

I love this from Cardinal George of Chicago who was kind of a mentor to me, and came out many times to the seminary.

In one of his speeches, he said this to the assembled seminarians, Priests are not bachelors.

Priests are married men, and they have children.

And it's a very important point he's making.

A bachelor.

You know, I'm just this single guy.

I'm unattached, you know?

I got nothing to worry about.

That ain't it.

If priests start living like that, they get into trouble .

a priest is a married man.

Now, why?

Because he's married to the Church.

Christ is the bridegroom, the Church is the bride.

The priest is configured unto Christ, therefore, he's married to the Church.

And he has children, the cardinal said.

Who are they?

The people he's been sent to serve.

You know, uh, when I became a bishop four years ago, um, Archbishop Gomez gave me this, uh, ring, uh, which was then given to me formally at the ordination.

And, uh, if you look in the instruction, there's a little instruction book for bishops, no kidding, and it's called the Bishop's Ceremonial.

And it tells us to wear this ring all the time.

Now, why?

Because it's a wedding ring.

You don't take your wedding ring off, you know.

I'm, I'm going on vacation, I take my wedding ring off, you know?

Your, your wedding ring, it, it's you're, you're, I'm bound, I'm bound to the, the people of, of LA.

I'm, I'm bound to this church.

Married, priests aren't bachelors, they're married men, they have children, which means they have this spiritual responsibility to give life.

That's what priesthood is about, and, and the means to it are sacraments.

I would tell my students all the time, Priests are men of the sacraments.

They're the heart of our, of our life.

You know, I'm happy to do this as I come to the close of these talks and I mention spiritual fatherhood.

And I love this, it's part of the, it's part of the, the poetic genius of the Church.

The person I most look to to understand what this means for my priesthood is not a priest, but my own father.

Because if a priest is a spiritual father, there was nobody, believe me, better at being a father than my dad was.

And so I look to him to understand what it means to be a spiritual father.

My dad died just a year after I was ordained a priest.

So my mom is still alive, my dad died right after I was ordained a priest, so he's been gone all these years, but I think of him all the time.

And, uh, one of my favorite stories about him is, um, when I was in high school, I was on the basketball team, but I wasn't very good.

I was like second string, so I would get in the game if we were like way ahead or way behind you know?

Had nothing to lose , you know?

So, uh, but nevertheless, my father, after a full day of work all the time, would come to every game I played, and this is like sophomore year of high school.

Believe me, you weren't coming to watch the sheer beauty of the game, you know?

But my father came to every game.

Well, another Chicago, uh, story here.

This was a winter night, and it was typical Chicago, like, you know, 15 degrees, uh, it was v- ice on the road, snow falling, horrific night.

Our team bus had trouble getting to this distant gym where we were playing, you know?

So we're suiting up before the game and, uh, we were saying to each other, Well, I mean, no one's gonna be here for this game.

Who's gonna come out on a night like this?

So we come up from the locker room onto the floor of the, of the court there, and, uh, sure enough on the, on the, uh, home side, there were three people, right?

On the visitors side, there's one person, and there's my father.

Aw.

And I didn't play that night.

You know?

It must've been a, it must've been- a close game.

I didn't play.

But it's how many years?

30, short of, how many years ago was that?

And I vividly remember it.

Why?

'Cause he was, he was showing what a father is, who gives his life for his wife, for his kids.

You know, uh, I say this without the moment's hesitation, not one moment hesitation.

My father would've given his life for me.

I, I know that.

And that's, it's not being melodramatic or anything.

It's just true, and I know it's true.

He would've given his life for me.

That's what fathers do.

That's what a priest is for his people.

He's not a bachelor.

He's a married man with children who's pledged to give his life for them.

And, and he's a life giver because he's a man of the sacraments.

That's what priesthood, seems to me, is all about.

Um, here's something I'll cite, been quoting Fulton Sheen a lot.

Um, Fulton Sheen said that, Every priest is a Jacob's ladder.

It's a great image, isn't it?

You know, the great ladder that Jacob dreamt of, and angels ascending and descending on the ladder.

That image is reiterated in the Gospel of John, when the Lord says to Nathaniel, Oh, you'll see greater things than that.

You'll see angels and, of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.

Remember?

So that beautiful image of a ladder that connects heaven to earth.

That's a priest.

Every priest is a Jacob's ladder because he effects a reconciliation of heaven and earth.

Now, you can over-stress the top side of that ladder.

Uh, the priest who just lives in the clouds, just lives high up in theology and prayer and spirituality, never deigns to have contact with the world.

Well, that might make you a contemplative monk or something, but it'll make you kind of a lousy priest.

My mom tells a story, this goes back many years ago, so this would've been like in the 1940s maybe, and, uh, they had a, a priest over to their house for dinner, and he told them that, when he was in the seminary, they were taught, Now, when you come down for an appointment, don't let people see where you're coming from, that you should just kind of appear.

Like, oh, come on.

I, I mean, uh, that's all fine if you're just gonna be a, you know, an angel and a pure contemplative, but a priest is a Jacob's ladder connecting heaven and earth.

Now, now turn that thing around.

When I was coming of age, we hit the other side of the ladder.

You know, it, w- we were very much into this world and being with the people and you're not d- distinct.

Okay, I mean, okay, that's good, but if that's all you are, then you're- you are a psychologist, or a social worker, or a political activist.

See, to be a priest, both ends of the ladder.

Uh, I love Pope Francis' smell of the sheep.

Yes, a priest should have the smell of the sheep, and he should be at home in the company of angels.

Both.

And that makes him a Jacob's ladder.

That makes him someone that connects heaven and earth.

I mentioned how all baptized people are priests, prophets, and kings, right?

Well, the Vatican II documents, in I think a kind of eloquent ambiguity, says that ordained priests are also priests, prophets, and kings.

Now, why do I say eloquent here in the ambiguity?

Because it emphasizes the connection between priesthood and baptism.

Priests serve the baptized.

That's all we do.

That's our full-time job, is to make other baptized people saints.

That's the priest's job.

What's clericalism?

And Pope Francis again has put his finger on this problem.

What's clericalism?

It's severing the link between priesthood and baptism, as though I belong to some special class, some elevated, special spiritual class.

No, no.

My whole purpose is to make you better priests, prophets, and kings.

Now, I'm doing it as a priest or a bishop in a apostolic way.

That means with apostolic authority, sanctifying, governing, and teaching the people.

But the whole purpose is to make you saints.

To forget that is to fall into the trap of clericalism.

How about now just a word about each of these with the ordained priest?

Where is the ordained priest's priesthood on fullest display?

When he presides, as is his enormous privilege, at the Eucharistic liturgy.

When he leads the holy people in the right praise of the Father.

When he offers to the Father, Christ on behalf of the people, he's acting as priest, sanctifier.

When he enacts the great sacraments of the church, he's acting as a priest or a sanctifier.

When is he prophet?

When he speaks the word of God precisely with apostolic authority.

Mind you, w- when I as a priest get up on Sunday to preach, what you're not hearing, I hope, are Bob Baron's opinions on things.

Who cares?

You know what I'm saying?

If I'm at a party with you, I can share y- my opinions about politics or whatever, or even, even my private opinions about religion.

See, but that's not what I'm doing when I'm preaching, I hope, I hope.

No, no.

When I'm preaching, I'm allowing Christ to speak through me.

I'm speaking with, with his authority, not my own.

That's why it's interesting, isn't it, everybody, that when I come out to celebrate mass, I purposely mask my street clothes.

Part of the symbolism, not the whole thing, but part of it, of putting on those vestments is so that you don't see, Oh, there's Bob Baron up there.

I mean, who cares?

Who cares?

No, what you're seeing is a temple priest.

You're seeing someone acting in the very person of Christ, that's very important, and speaking in the person of Christ.

How about king?

So he's priest, he's prophet.

Finally, he's king, the priest.

He's meant to order the charisms of the community.

It's something, you know, young priests fall into this trap a lot of, I'm gonna come to the parish.

I'm gonna set it on fire.

I'm gonna solve its problems.

I'm gonna take the lead.

Well, good luck with that program, right?

Uh, what priests have to learn, and the great ones do learn it, and they exercise this, their job is not to solve every problem, light every fire, or put out other fires, you know.

Their job is to look around.

What, what are the charisms available to this community?

What, uh, what, what does she have?

Wow.

What does he have?

Look, look what she can do.

Oh my goodness.

If I just can get them working together.

To be the orchestrator, if you want, of the charisms of the community, that's part of the kingly task of the priest.

Priest, prophet, king.

How about, uh, I'll, I'll close with this.

It's a hard truth.

It's a hard truth that I, I would, I'd always be careful in communicating it to my students.

You're a priest, but that means in the Christian dispensation that you are always also a victim.

Why?

Because Christ exercised his priesthood most fully on the cross.

That was the moment when he operated as the temple high priest.

That was the moment when he reconciled his people to God.

He was priest and victim at the same time.

Every priest I've ever known eventually comes to grip with this, grips with this.

Part of my priesthood is always to be a victim.

That is to say, to accept, to take into myself the suffering of the people I'm sent to serve.

Not a bachelor.

Bachelors run away from that kind of thing.

Bachelors protect themselves, they run away from that.

But you're a married man, you're a married man.

You live for your, your wife and your kids.

You, you give your life to them.

Priest and victim at the same time.Okay.

Can I, friends, now bring this whole conversation to a close with a few very simple little remarks?

Isn't it wonderful and indeed a little strange that through all of its ups and downs, even with all its remarkable failures, e- even with- with all the- the- some of the terrible things that have been done in its name, the Church in its sacraments has perdured.

I mean, you look at Christian history and say, Boy, everyone's been a saint.

Come on, there've been a handful of saints.

Yet, weirdly, seems to me, weirdly, the Church has consistently enacted the great sacraments.

What's that a sign of?

I think the clearest sign, Jesus said, Go.

Preach to all nations.

Baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit, and know that I am with you always.

Yes, even to the close of the age.

The sheerest sign that Christ is present to his Church is the ongoing power of the sacraments of the Church.

Where's Jesus?

What was visible in the Savior has passed into his mysteries, and through these great mysteries, these sacraments, we continue to feel his presence and his power.

God bless everybody.

Thank you for listening.