By Archbishop Thomas Wenski - The Archdiocese of Miami
- See related story: His mission: 'To prepare the best priests possible'
Archbishop Thomas Wenski preached this homily Nov. 23, 2020, at the installation of Father Alfredo Hernandez as rector/president of St. Vincent de Paul Regional Seminary in Boynton Beach.
Today is a happy day at St. Vincent de Paul. Like butterflies emerging from their cocoon, this week you will emerge from the bubble that life in the time of COVID-19 has given you here. And after your Thanksgiving break begins, we won’t see each other back on campus until after the New Year. But this is a happy day also because Father Alfredo Hernandez is formally installed as your new rector. As he has done before in assuming various responsibilities in the life of the Church, including that of pastor of St. Juliana’s, he will publicly make his Oath of Fidelity. I understand that Father Tim Cusick gave a great conference about the Oath of Fidelity so my homily can be a bit shorter.
In the months since your previous rector was appointed Bishop of Beaumont, Texas, the owner bishops of this regional seminary, under the direction of Bishop (Felipe) Estevez, at that time chair of the Board of Directors, appointed Father Hernandez acting rector and began a search for a new rector. This is a tricky proposition – before we can ask a priest if he wishes to be considered as a candidate, we have to ask his bishop or religious superior. They don’t always say yes. But despite that, we did have four very credible candidates, including Father Hernandez. After interviewing each candidate (by ZOOM, of course), Father Alfredo was our choice. As an alumnus but also as a long-time faculty member, Academic Dean, Dean of Men, and Vice Rector, he knows this seminary very well – and, he brings many talents to his new responsibilities.
The priest who is the patron of this seminary, St. Vincent de Paul, was the Mother Teresa of his day. In Pope Francis’ words, he was “a shepherd with the odor of the sheep.” While concerned for the poor, he was also just as concerned about the formation of the clergy and was instrumental in establishing seminaries to do just that. So, we invoke the intercession of St. Vincent de Paul. May Father Alfredo be guided by his example and prayers. In the words of St. John Paul II, in Pastores Dabo Vobis, a seminary is “an educational community in progress.”
That certainly could describe the disciples when Jesus first gathered them to himself. And, before he sent them out to preach and heal, he first called them “to be with him.” Here, as seminarians, you also are called to be disciples, to be “students of Jesus.” Here, at St. Vincent de Paul Seminary, the rector and faculty are here to help you not only learn about Jesus, but also to learn Jesus – for to be credible apostles, they must be first be faithful disciples. The four pillars of formation – the human, the academic, the spiritual and the pastoral – are designed to enable the seminarian to seek, to follow and to abide in Christ.
Today, we also celebrate the feast of Blessed Miguel Augustine Pro, a Jesuit priest who died in odium fidei – out of hatred for the faith. He was executed by a firing squad during the persecution of the Church in Mexico in the 1920s. Graham Greene’s novel, “The Power and the Glory,” tells the story of a flawed priest during this Mexican revolution who could not escape his fate.
Then, as now, the Church will often be regarded if not with scorn and ridicule then with utter incomprehension. But as St. John writes: “The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him” (1 John 3: 1). And, in an increasingly secularized world, a world where many have lost the sense of the transcendent, the priest is an enigma, a sign of great contradiction. In a world in which people live, in the words of Pope Benedict, “etsi Deus non daretur” – as if God does not matter – the Church will always seem “out of step” and irrelevant.
Yet, we cannot retreat behind locked gates and locked doors. As the Pope Francis has said, we need to build bridges and not walls. And he has challenged all of us to “go out of the sacristies” and go out to the “outskirts” “where people of faith are most exposed to the onslaught of those who want to tear down their faith.”
The world desperately needs the priest’s witness that God in fact does matter. And because the world needs priests, the witness of the priest that God does matter is made more compelling by his detachment from material comforts and signs of status, by his readiness to obediently be available wherever his bishop may send him, and by his chaste celibacy which is the source of spiritual fecundity.
Of course, all this sounds quite demanding. Sometimes, you might be tempted to complain about the demands placed on you – it’s just too much, you might say. Does Jesus ask too much of married couples when he demands lifelong mutual fidelity? Does Jesus ask too much of us to conform ourselves to the normal demands of Christian living? Did Jesus ask too much of Miguel Pro when he went before the firing squad, forgiving those who would shoot him and then shouting, “Viva Cristo Rey!”
The Gospel today suggests an answer: Those who gave much, in the end, were not pleasing to God. And so, it would appear that God doesn’t demand too much from us. The widow pleased God with her gift of very little: her two coins, “the widow’s mite.” God doesn’t want much from us; he wants everything. He wants it all. Father Alfredo Hernandez, on that note, I invite you to make your Oath of Fidelity.
