Fifth Sunday of Easter
May 22, 2011

• Explore the readings for today

Architectural drawing of the Cathedral Baptistery St. James Cathedral, 1994

        “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people that you may declare the wonderful deeds of God who called you out of darkness into marvelous light.”  Those words from today’s second reading are so important that they appear not once, but twice in our scriptures: once, in the Old Testament Book of Exodus, and again in the New Testament Letter of Peter.  And I considered them so important that, back in 1994 when we were renovating the Cathedral, I asked to have them carved into the stone floor around the baptistery.

        “Chosen race…royal priesthood…holy nation…God’s own people.” The late, great Jesuit preacher and theologian, Fr. Walter Burghardt, refers to these as four ‘titles of honor’, and that they surely are, and I might add that they far exceed other titles of honor the Church is fond of using (Your Holiness, Your Eminence, Your Excellency –- even Very Reverend!). In the Jewish scriptures they were titles given to the Israelites, God’s chosen people, to remind them of who they were.  In the New Testament, they became Church titles, titles for all of us who are the Church. They point out the unique dignity, the high calling of each and every member of the Church. Because they are so important, I want to say a word about each of them.
First, Chosen Race. We who have been baptized into Christ and who claim Christ as our Savior are chosen.  There is no chance involved here: only choice.  For reasons we will never grasp, God has chosen us, called us into this great community we call the Church. God loves us passionately and unconditionally, loves us both as individuals and as a community of believers.  We are called, we are chosen.

        We are also a royal priesthood. For Catholics, this truth can all too easily be overlooked because when we think of ‘priest,’ we usually think of people like me.  But before anyone like me can be called ‘priest,’ all of us are priests!  That’s because all of us, in Baptism, were anointed and made one with Jesus Christ who is the priest. And the great priestly sacrifice he offered on the cross becomes ours here at Mass when we offer our lives, our hopes, our dreams, our very selves -- all that we are and all that we have -- offer them to the Father along with Jesus, the priest.  We are indeed, “a royal priesthood!”
The third title is a holy nation. It has, of course, nothing to do with nation in the political sense with which we now use the word.  Here, nation is another word for community.  We are a holy community.  Even with all our sins and failings, as individuals and as a Church we are holy because God’s Spirit lives in us, breathes in us, consecrates us. It is said that St. Augustine often began his homilies by addressing the people as “Your holiness.”  We may not answer easily to that description but that doesn’t make it any less true.

        The fourth title is God’s own people. In the original Greek text, a literal translation of this is “a people that has become God’s own possession.”  And we are that people, my friends.  We have been purchased at a great price, purchased with the precious blood of Christ.  For this reason we belong to God, we are “God’s own….”
Now I realize that those exalted titles don’t always ring true for us. That’s because we are often more aware of our dark side than of our dignity: we believe, but we also doubt; we hope, but we also despair (or come close); we love, but we can also hate. We can be all too human but that doesn’t for a moment deny that we are touched by divinity, infused with divinity.  The early Church Fathers were fond of saying that ”Christ became human so that we might become divine.”  Think of that for a moment. It’s true!
And, of course, it has profound implications for how we live our lives. Who we are needs to be reflected in what we do. The remaining words of today’s passage from First Peter, also carved around our baptistery, say as much: “That you may declare the wonderful deeds of God who called you out of darkness into marvelous light.”  In other words, if we are “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people,” we have work to do. We who have been called from darkness into light are to tell our story, declaring God’s wonderful deeds, bearing witness to all that God has done for us and in us.

        Notice I said WE. Not just people in the pulpit like me. We. Every one of us. By virtue of our baptism, the gospel of Jesus Christ is ours to preach, ours to live. St. Francis of Assisi put it perfectly: “Preach the gospel always,” he said, “using words when necessary!”  His way of saying that, more important than any words we speak are the lives we lead, the principles we live by, the priorities we adopt, the positions we espouse. These are the things that will make it clear to people who we are.
Let me offer an example.  The gospel of Jesus Christ, the gospel we have been called preach and to live is, to borrow words of Pope John Paul II, The Gospel of Life, the gospel that deeply values and honors each and every human life without exception -- beginning with God’s precious gift of life in the womb and ending with God’s call at death -- fostering, nurturing, and supporting that life at every step along the way.

        This gospel of life is far-reaching: it includes life on death row, enemy life, the life of the homeless poor and the working poor, the life the frail elderly, the life of those who have no health care, the life of immigrants and refugees. We may prioritize among the life issues but we may not pick and choose among them. They are not selections in a cafeteria line, they are “a seamless garment,” in the words of the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, the great apostle of “the consistent ethic of life.” “When human life is considered cheap or expendable in one area,” he wrote, eventually nothing is held as sacred and all lives are in jeopardy.” Pope John Paul says the same in his Encyclical, the Gospel of Life, “Human life is sacred and inviolable at every state and in every situation.”

        The Gospel of Life.  We preach this gospel by carefully informing ourselves about the Church’s teaching on the life issues, by using our voices to advocate on behalf of human life whether in casual conversation or in communications with legislators, by casting ballots that reflect a strong and unwavering commitment to life, to justice, and to peace.
My friends, I’ve offered but one example of what it means to live out our baptismal call, one example of how we make clear that we really do know who we are: “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people.”

        Each one of us in this Cathedral has a calling, a high calling. Each one of us has been called out of darkness into marvelous light. Make no mistake, my friends: we’ve got our work cut out for us!

     Father Michael G. Ryan