Homily for the Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Rite of Candidacy

August 4, 2024
St. Mark Catholic Church
Argyle, Texas

Exodus 16:2-4, 12-15
Psalm 78:3-4, 23-24, 25, 54
Ephesians 4:17, 20-24
John 6:24-35

Today’s first reading from the Book of Exodus reveals that the Israelite community was angry at Moses for bringing them out of Egypt and into the wilderness.  The discomfort of the Israelites placed them in a mind that they would rather live in comfortable slavery than be free and face the challenges and expectations of mature freedom in fidelity to their vocation as God’s Chosen People.  The Israelites soon complain about the lack of food in the wilderness, so God provides them with manna, bread from heaven.

We read, “On seeing it, the Israelites asked one another, ‘What is this?’ for they did not know what it was. But Moses told them, ‘This is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat.’” In listening to this section from our first reading from the Book of Exodus, I was struck by these words “What is this?” Perhaps many of us are asking a similar question about the Rite of the Reception to Candidacy for our seminarians. We ask, “What is this?”

The Church provides a program of formation for young men to progress through seminary towards ordination to the priesthood. It is a developmental program through which the seminarian passes through three stages in his formation: the propaedeutic or introductory stage, the discipleship stage, and finally the configuration stage. Candidacy marks the end of the discipleship stage of formation and marks the entry of the seminarian into the configuration stage.

The discipleship stage, which these men have just completed, has been a period of encountering Jesus through prayer and study, through ministry and growth in self-awareness. It has been about being conformed to Christ and His teaching known by faith and as transmitted through Sacred Scripture and Tradition. It is now at the end of this stage when our seminarians are able to make their own the words of Saint Paul that we heard him address to the Ephesians in today’s second reading, “I declare and testify in the Lord that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds; that is not how you learned Christ, assuming that you have heard of Him and were taught in Him, as truth is in Jesus, that you should put away the old self of your former way of life, corrupted through deceitful desires, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new self, created in God’s way in righteousness and holiness of truth.”

Conformity to Jesus Christ through discipleship is something that is offered by Christ to all of the baptized. Yet, the priesthood of Jesus Christ requires more than conformity; preparation for configuration to Christ at ordination is required to be provided by the Church for the seminarians. Configuration to Christ is a deep internal and mature freedom that is developed throughout the final stage of seminary formation. Configuration requires the seminarian to prepare to accept the mind and heart of Christ as his own — to lay down his life for the sheep of His fold. Candidacy begins this stage and the grace offered by God to the candidate is to persevere in seeking this authentic internal freedom instead of becoming complacent with the slavery of the unredeemed human condition as the Israelites desired in the wilderness. Configuration through intimacy for the fulfillment of the unrepeatable and lasting configuration received sacramentally and indelibly at priestly ordination.

It is at this configuration stage when the seminarians begin to wear the Roman collar and clerical attire as a conscious reminder to them and to others of the expectations of Christ and His Church for them to be configured to Christ the Priest. Clerical attire is intended to be an external sign of configuration, but that configuration becomes the scandal of clericalism and entitlement if the seminarians abandon Christ’s offer of mature freedom and instead choose to exist without sacrificial love and devoted ministry to the Church. Configuration to Christ has Eucharistic overtones. Upon entry into the configuration stage, seminarians should gradually find the focus of their prayer moving from the exclusive petitioning of God for His graces for faithful discipleship, to begin to develop and to expand into the priestly prayer of “What do you ask of me, Oh Lord, and how shall I carry out your will for your people?”

This week’s Gospel is the sequel to the miracle of the loaves and fish that we heard last week.  The crowd that was fed return to Jesus’ home looking for Him.  When they find Him, He challenges them by asserting that they have sought Him out not because they saw signs and believed Him but only because they were amazed by the spectacle provided by the miracle.  So, they ask Jesus for a sign to give them certainty.  The miracle they experienced wasn’t enough; they refused to believe that it was a sign from God.  The people seek Jesus because they want to repeat the enthusiastic spectacle of the miracle; they want certitude, but they do not want faith. The spectacle of miracles does not lead us to faith; rather, Jesus shows us that faith in its simplicity offers us the miracle of configuration to Christ.

The spectacle of mockery and scorn displayed against the Last Supper at last weekend’s opening ceremonies of the Olympics was offensive not because it was insensitive to inclusivity of cultures and Christians. It was offensive and gravely sacrilegious as performed by those who have embraced a life corrupted through deceitful desires and that treats God as superfluous because it mocked God and His gift of His own Son.

The answer to the spectacle of this world is provided not through an alternative spectacle of Divine power measured by the egotism of this world, but rather through the generosity born and engendered by the offering and reception of the Eucharist by Christ Himself at every Mass. The Eucharist and Holy Orders are sacraments that are born of faith and generosity of the willingness of a man to give all that he has in answering Christ’s call, especially if what he offers is measured by the world as insufficient to meet the world’s demands, just as it judged the gift by the small child of five loaves and two fish in last week’s Gospel. As Pope Benedict XVI wrote in his Apostolic Exhortation entitled Sacramentum Caritatis, “It is not the Eucharistic food that is changed into us, but rather we who are mysteriously transformed by it. Christ nourishes us by uniting us to Himself; ‘He draws us into himself,’ not the other way around.”

The Rite of Reception of Candidacy lacks spectacle but is rich in faith. Jesus’ words from today’s Gospel are especially helpful for us to remember this truth,  “Amen, amen, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven; my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” Only Christ can call a man to the priesthood.

Finally, my ministry today exercised as your bishop is also an act of faith made simply on behalf of the Church. Dear sons, in calling you to candidacy I declare in the presence of the Church, that having accompanied you with your seminary formators and the People of God, that you demonstrate not only the positive human qualities requisite for the priesthood, but there is nothing manifest in your human character that forms a formidable obstacle for you to live an authentic priestly vocation in accord with the Grace of God.

Today, on this August 4^th, the Memorial of Saint John Vianney, the Patron Saint of Priests who said, “There is nothing so great as the Eucharist. If God had something more precious, He would have given it to us,” we pray that none of us will work for the food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which only the Son of Man can give us. May we persevere together towards full configuration to Christ the Good Shepherd who willingly lays down His life for His sheep and invites us to do the same with freedom.