Friends
Peace be with you.
Please permit me to take you on a bit of a deep dive for this homily. I’d like to talk about the nature of priesthood in the Old Testament but I promise I’m going somewhere. And, to be utterly transparent, much of this information comes from a podcast I listen to called Sunday School: a Pillar Podcast. The first priests from the time of Abraham were the first-born sons. It was common for people not in relationship with the one true God to sacrifice their first-born sons as a sign of trust that God would give you more sons to carry on the family name. However, as we can see in the story of Abraham and Isaac, God didn’t demand the sacrifice of the first-born son, instead they would be priests for his people, the intermediaries between God and man. This held true until the Exodus event and one point in that journey in particular. When Moses went up on the mountain to enter into the covenant with God, Aaron, who was a priest as an eldest son, made a golden calf that was meant to replace the one true God. When Moses sees this, he asks if any of the tribes would be loyal to the one true God instead of this false golden calf and only one, the Levites, raise their hands. From then on, only the Levites are allowed to carry out the sacrifices to God. What’s the first thing the Levites do when they’re appointed priests? They slaughtered three thousand men, presumably the ancestral priests who should have been loyal to God but were loyal to the golden calf instead.
Let’s now jump ahead a bit and look at the Pentecost event as it was described in the first reading. The Apostles have been told by Jesus to wait until they receive the Spirit and, when it appears, it comes as a strong driving wind and tongues as of fire. Tongues, in this sentence, means language not the type of tongues we have in our mouth. That’s why they can speak in a way that Pathians, Medes, Elamites, and all these other people can understand. They are speaking some kind of fiery language. They are so effective that three thousand people get baptized. That’s a huge number of people being baptized. I baptized seven people at an Easter Vigil once and was exhausted. If each of the twelve apostles took an equal number of people to be baptized, each would have baptized two hundred fifty people. Makes me tired just to think about it! So what’s really going on here?
Three thousand priests died after the situation of the molten calf. For the Jewish people, on Pentecost, you gather in the grain harvest after, fifty days before, you just saw emerging from the ground. Jesus was the first to emerge from the ground on Easter morning and now we’re gathering in the wheat harvest at Pentecost. He’s doing it by undoing the death sentence justifiably given to the three thousand Old Testament priests by renewing the face of the earth with newly baptized wheat people. Baptism is a participation in Jesus’ rebirth from a life marked by original sin to a life of grace and mercy. So these three thousand people become, in a sense, the new priests of the New Covenant in grace and mercy.
Baptism makes us all a part of this same priesthood. And, while my ministerial priesthood is different, nonetheless, we all share in the priesthood of all believers, which is ultimately a participation in the one priesthood of Jesus Christ. There are three ways we can live out our common baptismal priesthood. First, we can develop a personal relationship with our heavenly Father through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit can teach us how to pray through Jesus to the Father. We can do this best in adoration but we can also do this at home in our prayer space or while walking in nature. Whenever we stop and ponder the mystery of God, we are practicing our common priesthood. Secondly, we can help build up the Body of Christ by coming to Mass and praying the rosary and other devotions with people in communal prayer services. We can put our gifts and talents in service to the church, not in a way that is meant to lord power over others but in a way that is inviting and welcoming and edifying to others. Lastly, we can teach the gospel to our family, friends, and the whole world. Parents are the best teachers of their children in the faith and we can’t rely on faith formation, even our great program Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, to do it all for us. If we aren’t praying together as a family and talking about God at home, it speaks to the priority we give to God. Is God just something we do on Sundays or someone actively always in our lives?
How is God calling you to activate your baptismal priesthood?
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