Each semester, seminarians at St Mary's are asked to preach a "postil" or mini sermon during Evening prayer. Today is my turn to preach, so I thought that I would upload my postil in place of my usual monthly post.
Brothers, this evening I want to turn to the first line of our reading: We eagerly await the coming of our Savior, The Lord Jesus Christ.
We eagerly await the coming of our Savior.
Recently I was reading a book from Dcn James Keating called Remain in Me, and I think that his work is quite appropriate for the Advent season. For those who aren’t familiar, Dcn Keating is one of the most influential spiritual directors in the United States, and he works to serve clergy and seminarians at the Institute for Priestly Formation. In this book, he writes to existing priests and deacons in order to help them Remain in God.
One quote from the book stuck out to me in particular.
“What is crucial is that we are first and continually fascinated with God. As our lives become defined more and more by this fascination, we become “helpful” to persons as clergy. Without such fascination, all that is left for us to develop are skill sets of the secular helping professions, skills readily available without holy orders." Pg 60
So he proposes that we need to be fascinated by God. What qualifies somebody to be fascinated with something? I like to think of a fascination as an interest that seems borderline irrational; one that is irresistible. Whether we acknowledge it or not we are all fascinated by some niche thing. For some of us it may be a masterpiece of Beethoven, the writings of Pope Leo the 13th, or even the order in which the school buses line up behind All Saints on any given day.
As we finish off the semester, our aim should not merely be to complete our assignments with a sufficient grade in order to meet our formation requirements. Our Lord wants us to be eagerly awaiting his coming, not just on the last day, but in each moment. Speaking for myself, I commonly fall to the temptation to push off prayer as secondary to my other obligations, especially my school work.
Deacon Keating calls this issue out bluntly. In the Church’s history, we have had too many ministers who have not integrated a fascination with God into their work. They may be more worried about their busy schedule, the disheartening emails in their inbox, or even the latest news out of the Vatican. This has left them to be of no more help than a secular social worker, excluding the sacraments of course. This is the antithesis of what we should be aiming for. If we want to be the Holy priest that God is calling us to be, then we need to be fascinated by Him.
If fascination with God is something that seems impossible to grasp, remember that He was fascinated with You first. Our Lord tells us, “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain”.
Brothers, this is not only for the fruit of our future ministry, but also for our own salvation. If we find ourselves eagerly awaiting Our Lord each day, then we can have hope that we will remain with Him forever.
Amen