ARCHDIOCESE OF PHILADELPHIA

Your Eminence, Cardinal Arinze,
Bishop Wuerl and other brother Bishops,
Dear Priests, Deacons and Religious,
Dear Friends in our Lord Jesus Christ,

            This 2004 Convention of Serra International finds us gathered together in this Diocese of Pittsburgh, gathered together in the name of Jesus and under the sign of His Sacred Heart.

            We have come here to promote the special aim of Serra International, which is Vocations to the Priesthood. Even as we do this we show our deep appreciation and support of vocations to the consecrated religious life, the call of God to Christian married love, and the vocation to the single life of dedicated service. We know that God s plan is something very holy for all who have been called by Baptism to discipleship in Christ Jesus. We know also that all vocations in the Church need the priesthood because everyone needs the Eucharist. If there is no priesthood there is no Eucharist! If there is no Eucharist, there is no Church! It is the priesthood that keeps alive also the great treasure of God s mercy that is given to us in the Sacrament of Penance or Reconciliation, the Sacrament of Confession. It is through the priesthood that the word of God is brought into our lives, and the supreme proclamation of this word is the sacramental proclamation of this word in the Sacrifice of the Mass.

            For these reasons it is so fitting that everyone in the Church clergy, religious, and laity should make special efforts to promote vocations to the priesthood and to support priests in their sacred ministry. In God s providence, this role that belongs to everyone has been assumed with particular zeal by Serra International. How impressive it is that in Serra International, which is made

up principally of lay persons, such a great effort is made on behalf of the priesthood. This commitment and this goal show how greatly our Catholic faith has taken root in the hearts of our people how much the People of God understand and love God s plan for His church. How impressive that Catholic lay people, with their own important vocation, dedicate themselves to promote another vocation, different from their own, but intimately related to it and to the well-being of the whole Church.

            Dear friends: The priesthood of Jesus Christ is a gift of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a gift of His love for His people, for all His people. Just recently the Church has celebrated the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and today we celebrate the votive Mass of the Sacred Heart precisely because we wish to concentrate our attention on the love that has made the priesthood possible and that motivates and sustains all the activities of Serra International.

            To understand devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is to understand so much of what the Church is all about. Our votive Mass today of the Sacred Heart gives us the opportunity to penetrate the mysteries of Christ and to see them in their proper focus.

            During the cycle of the liturgical year we celebrate so many different events in the life of Christ. In Advent we celebrate His longed-for coming into the world. On the feast of the Annunciation we celebrate the actual Incarnation of the Word of God, when the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, the Son of the Eternal Father, took flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary and became man. He who was eternally divine, like His Father, now became human, like His Mother and like us. On Christmas we adore the newborn Savior in the arms of His Mother Mary and under the watchful gaze of Saint Joseph, His foster father.

            As the liturgical year goes on, we recall the hidden life of Jesus, the events of His public life, and then the dramatic unfolding of His Paschal Mystery through His Passion, Death, Burial and glorious Resurrection. Following this, we celebrate Christ s triumphant Ascension into heaven where He is seated at the right hand of the Father. Then comes the feast of Pentecost, when Jesus sends the Holy Spirit from His Father to vivify His Church for all generations. After Pentecost, we still have other great mysteries to celebrate: the feast of the Most Blessed Trinity and then the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, which we call Corpus Christi and in which we honor and adore, under signs of bread and wine, the entire Christ: body and blood, soul and divinity.

            At this point we ask ourselves: Is there anything else left to celebrate in this great cycle of feasts? In this regard, a great spiritual writer of the Church, Blessed Columba Marmion, recently beatified together with Pope John XXIII and Pope Pius IX says: yes. In celebrating the Sacred Heart of Jesus we celebrate the love that motivated all the other events of His life, all His actions, everything that Jesus did for us and for our salvation. It is love that explains everything in Jesus.

            For the Church, the Sacred Heart of Jesus is a symbol of His love, but it is even more than this. It is a sign of His life. Without the beating of the human heart there can be no life. And so the human living heart of Jesus signifies that He is alive. In God, love is identical with life. This is why Saint John tells us in our second reading: God is love. The Heart of Jesus who is God expresses the life of God, which is love. And this love explains everything that Jesus did for us.

            Today we celebrate the Heart of Jesus with a votive Mass in order to recall that it was love in Jesus that motivated Him to give His Church the gift of the priesthood. The priesthood comes directly to us from the love of Christ s Heart.

            But love, dear friends the love of Christ calls for acceptance and response. Today we evoke the love of Christ s Heart also in order to understand that we must respond in love to the gift of the priesthood. The priesthood came from the Heart of Christ. We owe it to the Heart of Christ to show gratitude for so great a gift.

            And this brings us back once more to Serra International and to its principal aim and holy end: to promote vocations to the priesthood and to sustain and support those who are called to this vocation.

            What is at stake is the plan of God for His Church, the response of love to the gift of Christ s Heart, the acceptance in faith and the zealous promotion of the priesthood.

            The greatest expression of love that we know is to lay down our lives. In the Gospel today Jesus explains to us that He is the Good Shepherd. Five times he speaks to us about laying down His life for us. He tells us that He does it willingly, that He has the power to do it, and that this is the reason that the Father loves Him: This is why the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again.

            In explaining his sacrificial love Jesus also outlines the very fabric of the priesthood and He lets us have yet another insight into the role of His priests in the history of salvation.

            And from these words of Jesus, we can further understand what Serra International is called to promote and support in the priesthood of the Church, which is an everlasting gift of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Amen.