https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=J86bnD67nGs
Well I hope nobody will mind if I give spoilers for a movie that’s been out for almost a hundred years now. I’m sure you’re all familiar with The Wizard of Oz. The basic plot line. Dorothy’s whisked away in a tornado to the magical land of Oz. Her house crashes on the Wicked Witch of the East and she magically inherits the ruby slippers. The Good Witch tells her that she needs to go to the Wizard of Oz to return home to Kansas. She meets the scarecrow and the Tin Man and the lion and they have to confront the Wicked Witch in her town. And then when they figure out the true identity of the wizard it turns out that he’s not really any help in getting her back to Kansas. At this point the Good Witch says you’ve had what you’ve needed the whole time. You just click those ruby slippers together three times and say there’s no place like home. You’ll be transported back to your home. And indeed the whole thing works out just as the Good Witch says. You notice she didn’t tell Dorothy that until the end of the movie. After her arch nemesis had been killed by Dorothy. So I wonder if this Good Witch is really as good as she’s presenting herself as. But Dorothy on her entire journey she had exactly what she needed in order to go home. When I went to seminary I learned all about the sacramental theology of the church. What the church teaches about especially the sacrament of baptism. And what I realized is that on the day of my baptism I received everything I needed. The seeds of immortal life, a down payment on immortality. The life of Jesus himself. All of that was placed into my soul on the day of my baptism. I think one of the things that I’d like to do with folks in the church is to not wait until the end of the movie. To tell you what you’ve received and what you’ve been given. I’d like to let you know how powerful your baptism is when you need it. Your baptism contains in a seed form everything that you need to be a Christian. Everything you need to be a Christian your whole life long is planted there in a seed form. Even your vocation. Even those things that the Lord can foresee you will face in your life he has placed inside your soul already. On the day of your baptism. So what does baptism do and what is it that makes it so powerful? Well baptism does three things. It puts sin out. It brings God in. And it welcomes people into the church. Sin out, God in, in the church. So what is this sin and why does it need to be put out? In order to understand sin we have to take a look at the world the way that it was before sin had entered into it. We look at the world that Adam and Eve were created into. And it was a world of perfect harmony. Adam and Eve lived in this perfect harmony with God. They were given exactly everything they needed. They could simply walk with our Lord. They lived in perfect harmony with the created world around them. They understood how it was they were to live. They had this perfect harmony within themselves. They didn’t have any of their feelings or their thoughts intrusively disrupting their lives. But instead were able to do the good that they could see without any problems. And Adam and Eve lived in perfect harmony with each other. There was no need for them to bicker or argue or fight about all of those things. And this harmony could have been passed on to us. This was something that Adam and Eve could have given to the whole of the human race. If they had kept the harmony, if they had kept that special grace from God, we could enjoy all of that. Alas, it was not to be. When Adam and Eve cut themselves off from God, when they decided that they did not want to trust and obey their loving Father, that broke that harmony. That made it so that they could not walk simply with God. And it was their harmony with God that gave them this perfect harmony with creation inside themselves and with each other. You all remember the story. The second Adam and Eve sin, God shows up and says, Where are you? Why have you done this? Adam points his finger at Eve. Eve points her finger at the serpent. It all becomes a blame game. You can see the whole of society starting to fall apart right there. And so, we don’t have the harmony that we were built for. We don’t have the connection with God. We are all born alienated from God. There needs to be something to cross that gap, come in between us, in order to restore that relationship that was supposed to be there. Baptism removes that alienation. It removes that, it covers the gap, it crosses the distance, brings us back together into that harmony with God that was always intended. And so we say that baptism both erases original sin, and for any adult who is baptized, it erases the entirety of their personal sin. Anything they might have done over their lifetime is washed away in the waters of baptism. So God has to clear that sin out in order to make a home for himself, to put him in, to put God in. Baptism, this is maybe the most amazing part of it, is that it makes you into a child of God. We’ll read this from St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens, as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him. In love he destined us for adoption to himself, through Jesus Christ, in accord with the favor of his will, for the praise and glory of his grace that he granted us in the beloved. St. Paul was fond of run-on sentences, and if he had my English teachers they would have docked him for that. But fortunately, that key phrase there, he has destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ. Now this word adoption, this word adoption doesn’t have quite the same punches it might have had 30 or 40 years ago, because people my age will very frequently talk about adopting a pet. And that’s just not what happens. When you adopt, let’s say a child, somebody into your family, they become equals to the natural children. They become just like your own, at least that’s the ideal, at least that’s the goal. And the dog will not take care of you when you’re in a nursing home. The dog is not going to bring any dishes to Thanksgiving dinner. The dog cannot help you move into a new apartment. The dogs are not adopted. We adopt other human beings into our household. So what does that mean about you? What does that mean about you if you are going to be an adopted child of God? That means somehow you become Jesus. You become Jesus. You become Jesus. When I was in the seminary, I did a nine week spiritual formation program at Creighton University in Omaha. And they brought out Monsignor Essiff. And Monsignor Essiff, he’s just like Batman for seminarians. He had received spiritual direction from Padre Pio. He was an exorcist. And there was rumors going around, I’ve never been able to substantiate them, that if you were in confession with him, he could actually read your soul. This was like, yeah, Batman, right? He’s got all the plans there. And by the time I got to meet him, I think he was in his 80s, his sight was going, and he’s only about this tall. And so he stood there squinting at us seminarians and he just says, You are Jesus. No qualifications, not backing that up. And that this wise and holy man said to us, You are Jesus. And I’ve been trying to figure it out ever since. And so we read from the second letter of St. Peter, His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises. Through these you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion and become partakers in the divine nature. That’s right there in the Bible. We become partakers of the divine nature. What does that mean? Well, what has the divine nature done? What are a few things that we could point out that God in his divinity has accomplished? How about speaking the world into creation? The Lord says, Let there be light and there was light. He separates the light from the darkness, calls the light day and calls the darkness night and says that it is good. That power that created the universe, that is creating the universe, through your baptism you are now a partaker in that. You have a part of the plan. You have power in God’s kingdom. For some reason we tell this to children, if God ever stopped thinking about you, you would cease to exist. Did anybody’s parents ever tell them that? At least I’ve heard people say that, you know, it’s like, why would you tell that to children? I don’t know why we say that, but it is actually true. So maybe that’s a good enough reason to tell it to children, huh? The Lord sustains the existence of the universe, continues to create and sustain this world. And you are, by your baptism, by your adoption into Jesus, a partaker in that. What about the power that knocked down the walls of Jericho, sent the earthquake to tumble those walls down? You’re a partaker in that. What about the power that healed the man born blind? Well, you are now a partaker in that. Well, you are now a partaker in that. And what about the power that raised Jesus from the dead? You are now a partaker in that. What Jesus possesses by his nature as the second person of the Trinity, as being God himself, we participate in that activity. We share in the work and the spiritual power in what he’s doing. This is what participation is. This is what partaking is. It’s that we are sharing in this work, in this power. Sometimes participation is an activity between equals. You could think of a couple dancing out on the dance floor. You could think of working on a project together. But we do not become somehow Jesus the way he was Jesus. We participate. We share in his work. We are empowered to be like him. And so when I say, send out God in, I mean it as directly as I can. That you, by the power of your baptism, have the life of God himself in you now. So, send out God in, into the church. The letter of St. Paul to the Colossians. He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead. That in everything he might be preeminent. So we look around on all of the believers in this assembly. And we see that as a body. As the mystical body of Christ on earth. And he is the head, and we are the members. That’s what it means to be incorporated. The word, a corporation, being incorporated, means being formed into a body. Comes from the Latin word corpus, means body. And so every corporation that you see out in the world will just take Apple because they’re the biggest in the world. They’re all governed by a head, and they go out and they sell computers and phones that are twice as expensive as they need to be. And our head is Jesus. And he gives us the direction. He gives us the purpose. He gives us the vision. He gives us the life. And we go about being him and representing him in the world. And that’s why the Feast of Pentecost, the celebration of things like confirmation are important. That spirit that animated Jesus, the Holy Spirit, also God. That being sent upon us is what fully brings us into the church. That we now have that spirit of Jesus living on in us. And the church is now where Jesus continues his work. His human body has been ascended into heaven. He no longer walks about doing what he did while he was here on earth. That we, we are now Jesus. And we are now called to do his work on earth. He represents himself through us now. And so, the sin out, God in, into the church. All of that happened on the day of your baptism. And so, for I imagine the majority, if not all of us, this condition of being an adopted child of God and a member of the mystical body of Christ has been your entire life long. And so, you may wonder why am I not more Christ-like? Why didn’t I just get absolutely zapped with all possible virtues? Why is it that I’ve ever sinned at all? Our salvation is not something that God just wants to do to us. It’s not God just simply animating us like a puppet, making us do what he wants. No, he wants us to participate as children, as sons and daughters. For those of you who have had your own children, you know full well that they have minds of their own. And that if you want them to cooperate, you kind of have to welcome them in, to woo them in even a little bit. And so, God does not eliminate all of your problems. He does not eliminate all of your tendencies to sin because he wants you to participate in his work. And so maybe that’s one of the first things that we need to learn to do as Christians, to participate in his work, to participate in our own salvation and sanctification. To put it simply, Jesus says, if anyone would be my disciple, let him take up his cross and follow after me. Very often, our cross is our own failings and our own mediocrities, and we want to run away from it. We don’t want to bear this burden. And so we put the cross down and we try and go do something else. And that’s what sin is. That’s what our own personal sin is, is this turning away from God. And this sin, it weakens us. And it makes it so that the seed planted in our baptism is not bearing the fruit that God had asked of it. And in fact, a sufficiently grave sin, a mortal sin, that can cut down the whole of the plant back down to its seed form, no longer bears any fruit but is completely died. The world needs you to bear fruit. Christ needs you to bear the good fruit your baptism is intended to produce. So my goal is to teach you how to unlock this baptism. And I think the best way to go about that is another list of three things. That while Christ was on earth, we saw him carry out three offices, three roles, three jobs, priest, prophet and king. We saw, we see when we read the Bible carefully in the Old Testament that these three roles, these offices that Christ had were broken up amongst different people all throughout the Old Testament. So we look for a priest and the priest that we see is Aaron, the brother of Moses. He lived out this priestly office for the people of Israel and his sons inherited the office of priest after him. For Moses, he’s a prophet. He is the one who most clearly and consistently in the Old Testament speaks on behalf of God. And for King, that is King David, that he ruled over the people of Israel, remaining faithful to God and doing his will as the king. And from his line came the Messiah. And what Aaron, Moses and David did was a prefigurement and a foreshadowing of what Christ would accomplish perfectly on his life on earth. And if we’re going to share in the life of Jesus, if we are Jesus on the earth right now, we participate in these roles in these offices as well. And so for the rest of this talk, we’re just going to tell you what it means to say that you are a priest. Priests are experts in holiness. All right, that’s really simple. We could just end the talk right now, right? And what do we mean by holiness? Well, you can look at the way human beings talk and the way they behave. And we have kind of this middle realm of acceptable discourse, middle realm of acceptable discourse, people, places and things. If we go down below, we get potty humor and those sorts of things. We don’t want to talk about that. That’s below acceptable discourse. And if you go up a little too high, well, first you bump into politics, and that can get a little rancorous because that’s above us. That’s how we all live together. And then you get up into holiness, things that are set outside of ordinary days, ordinary work. So let’s take a look at some examples. We could take an example of a holy thing. How it’s about the chalice that we priests use to celebrate mass. Well, that chalice has been taken out of ordinary human use, such that if you walked into the sacristy over there, took out my chalice, poured Coca-Cola into it and started taking a drink out of it, what do you think my reaction would be? It wouldn’t be nice. That chalice has been taken out of everyday human use and now it has been raised up into the divine, into the sacred, into the holy. What about this place here? Or maybe more properly, the place that’s going to be over there, the church. The church is a holy place. And we teach people that we behave a little bit differently here. So how many of you ever had to spit out a piece of gum on your way into church or swallow it? It doesn’t take seven years to digest. That’s a myth. This is a holy place. And there’s nothing wrong with gum chewing, but we don’t do that here. We don’t run around and play tag here. We don’t serve McDonald’s on the altar. It’s set aside. It is no longer given to ordinary use. What about holy times? There’s holy times as well. What is the purpose of Christmas? It is not an economically productive day. Nobody’s laying tile on Christmas. Nobody’s coding on Christmas. Nobody’s educating children on Christmas. It’s kind of set out of the ordinary use and dedicated to holy things. And finally, we have holy people. We’ve got Jesus, we’ve got the Blessed Virgin Mary. If we’re behaving ourselves, we are not taking their name in vain. We are not using the name of Jesus as a swear word. We speak to him only with reverent and respectful tones. So that’s what holiness is. We’ve set things above ordinary human use. Now the Latin word for a priest is sacerdotes, which literally translates into a holy doer, one who does holy things. And there’s two principal acts of a priest, of a holy doer. And they’re nice, fancy words, words that’ll make you just sound so educated. Sanctification and mediation. Aren’t those just the most wonderful words? You’ve already forgotten them, haven’t you? And so, sanctification, that is bringing things up, and mediation is bringing things down from heaven. Sanctification, mediation, bringing things up to heaven, bringing things down from heaven. They don’t need to be four syllable words necessarily. And that’s what you’re called to do as a priest. You are called to sanctify, and you are called to mediate the presence of God. And so, sanctification, bringing up. Let’s take a look at that. How many of you have ritually sacrificed a bowl recently? Yeah, it’s been since COVID for me too. Why would a human being do that? We don’t see a whole lot of animal sacrifice in the world today, but the ancient world was all into it. Every village, every town would have priests. And in the ancient world, being a priest was mostly like being a butcher. You were constantly slaughtering animals, you were constantly carving them up, burning parts of them, cooking parts of them. And I don’t do any of that. Why would you destroy a perfectly good piece of livestock? What you are doing, what you are ritually symbolizing in that, is that you are taking it out of human use, and you are sending it up into the world of the divine. You’re sending it up into heaven. It’s no longer a part of ordinary, everyday life, but you are sending that up to God. And just like my chalice, just like the church, just like Christmas, and just like Jesus himself has no earthly use, so also that sacrifice, that sacrifice has been taken out of earthly commerce and been sent up to heaven, with the expectation that the blessings would flow down from heaven. And so we can look at the life of Jesus from an earthly point of view, purely sociological, purely philosophical, and what we see is a life disastrously cut short. That somewhere in his early 30s, he was murdered for no particular reason, and that the good work that he had done, well that frankly should have ended with him. But that’s an earthly point of view, and it only operates according to earthly logic. Because as a Christian, we believe that Jesus’ death saved the whole world, redeems us from sin. That by taking his life entirely out of this middle realm, out of this ordinary use, and offering himself up perfectly and completely to God, his Father, he brought down blessings upon the entire world. He took on all of the world’s evil and responded with perfect love. So how do we live that out? Are all of us called to be a martyr? Well the way we begin is that we have holy times, holy places, and holy activities that we consecrate to God. When you pray, either at home or at the church, you’re taking a chunk of time that you could have used for something earthly, and you’re consecrating that to God. It no longer has any earthly use. So every hour that you’ve ever spent in church, from an earthly point of view, is useless. It makes no production, doesn’t produce anything for the world, but well, you offer that up to God. God sends blessings upon that. And the most incredible thing about being a Christian is that what seems most useless to us can become most precious to God. And I’m speaking especially of profound suffering. I can put up with going to the dentist. I don’t like, like when I have a crown. This right here, that’s a crown right there. You know what they do to put on a crown? I didn’t until the dentist started going at it, but they shave your tooth down. That was unpleasant. But I didn’t like having a nasty chipped tooth, and so I thought, well, allowing this maniac with the tools to do his work, that’s probably going to be better in the long run. So I could put up with that. I could suffer through that for the sake of a crown. But there’s plenty of suffering in this world that doesn’t have a good purpose to it, at least not one that we can see. Why does this have to hurt so much? Why is it that I have to deal with this? This is useless. And some people in the midst of profound suffering despair and say, there’s nothing that can make this worthwhile. But Jesus can. And so if you take even especially your suffering and offer that up to the Lord, joining it to what he accomplished on the cross, Jesus can do amazing things with that. He can send blessings we cannot even imagine through the offering up of our sufferings. St. Paul says, I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake. And in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is the church. The only thing that’s lacking in the sufferings of Christ is its application in the here and now. And so we can offer our whole lives up to God. We can offer our time and attention, our treasure, but especially the suffering, that can do amazing things, that can draw amazing blessings out of heaven. The Lord did not choose to save us without suffering. And so obviously it’s precious and good to him. And so that’s sanctification. That is bringing things up to heaven. We are called to do that as priests of Jesus Christ. Every time you pray, especially when you offer up your sufferings, you are Jesus offering up sacrifices to the Father. And then we have mediation, bringing down. And that’s never going to be perfect here on this earth. We look at people who live in monasteries. They try and make as much of their life as they can manage wholly. As much as possible they dedicate themselves to the Lord. And sometimes they still have to clean the toilets, they still have to cook supper, they still have to fix the water heater when it’s broken. Perfect holiness will only be accomplished when Jesus comes again. But if you take your call as a priest seriously, you’ll find that the more time you spend bringing things up to heaven, the more you’ll be able to bring down the presence of Christ into your lives. It’s like water. It just ends up getting everywhere. It seeps through everywhere. And so your life will become more and more holy. Your life will become more and more heavenly. And you will actually be able to be the presence of Christ for the world. And people may begin to notice. And your priesthood will lead into being a prophet. But that’s for another talk. So we are all baptized, we are all Christ, and we are all priests. We bring things up, we bring it down. So all that is nice, but what do I do? It’s not enough just to have theory. Well, brace yourselves, we have another list of three coming. And this is really simple. Daily prayer, weekly mass, monthly confession. If you start putting that into practice now, or if you renew it, if it’s something that’s fallen off, those three things will help you begin to exercise your priesthood with more intensity and devotion. Daily prayer, weekly mass, monthly confession. And so you are all priests. We are all priests. We are called to offer up our lives to God and called to be the presence of Jesus in the world. If you commit to daily prayer, weekly mass, and monthly confession, God will transform you into his priest, a priest like Jesus Christ himself. So we’ll take a few minutes and quiet reflection, and then we’ll end with benediction.