Sermon on the Mystery of the Visitation

Missa in Visitatione Beatae Mariae Virginis

Ordinatio Sacerdotum Instituti Christi Regis Summi Sacerdotis: Rev.dorum D.norum Sebastiani HUGOBOOM, Nicolaui JOHANNI, Toan NGUYEN, et Matthaei WŁODARCZYK

Die II Iulii a.D. MMXXVI

Epistola: Sg5, 8-14

Evangelium: Lk 1, 39-47

Sermon

To the congregation

Celebrating the Mystery of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the second of the Joyful Mysteries of the Most Holy Rosary, we contemplate the mystery of God’s wondrous love for us, love without measure and without cease. We contemplate the ultimate expression of God’s love for us in the union of the divine nature of the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity with our human nature under the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary. We reflect on the finality of the Incarnation: the Redemption. God the Son became man to suffer, die, rise from the dead, and ascend to the right hand of the Father, so that He might live in us always through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit from His glorious-pierced Heart into our hearts.

The divinely inspired words of the Canticle of Canticles employ the language of conjugal love – pure, selfless, and fecund – to help us to understand more deeply the reality of God’s love, its substance, its intimacy. God speaks to us in the language of a beloved spouse for his bride:

Arise, my love, my dove, my fair one, and come away; for behold, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth… The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom, they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.[1]

At the Visitation, we witness the response to the mystery of God’s love in Saint Elizabeth and in Saint John the Baptist, the infant in her womb. At the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint Elizabeth and Saint John the Baptist recognize God the Son Incarnate in the womb of Mary for the salvation of the world, and they respond with deepest joy. The Gospel tells us:

And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the child leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and she exclaimed with a loud cry: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?[2]

We repeat the words of Saint Elizabeth in praying the Angelical Salutation, The Hail Mary, expressing, with her, deepest wonder and joy at the mystery of the Redemptive Incarnation.

God’s wondrous love of us manifests itself today in the gift of new priests to act in the person of His Incarnate Son for our eternal salvation. Contemplating the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the gift of new priests to the Church, we are filled with deepest joy. The Holy Spirit inspires us, as He inspired Saint Elizabeth, to pray, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin: “Blessed are thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.”[3]

Privileged to witness the priestly consecration of our sons and brothers, let us never fail to pray for them and for the souls placed in their priestly care. May their priestly hearts, united to the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary, be always one with the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus. May they never cease to place their hearts totally into the Sacred Heart of Jesus to bring forth from His glorious-pierced Heart the salvific outpouring of the Holy Spirit into the hearts of the souls confided to their priestly care.

Contemplating the wondrous sign of God’s love for us in the conferral of the Sacred Order of the Priesthood on our sons and brothers, I, in the name of the Church, express heartfelt gratitude to their parents, to their families and friends, to the priests who have inspired and assisted them, to the priests charged with their priestly formation at Saint Philip Neri Seminary, to their confrères in the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, and to all who have helped them in any way to respond to Christ’s call: “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men”.^[4]

To the ordinands

Dear sons, you are about to be raised to the Order of the Priesthood. By the grace of the sacrament, you will teach the faithful in the person of Christ the Divine Master. Through your faithful study of Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, and your obedience to the Roman Pontiff, the Successor of Saint Peter, and the Bishops, Successors of the Apostles, hand on the truths of the Catholic faith to the souls in your priestly care. Pray fervently daily, especially through the intercession of Saint Michael the Archangel, that you may always resist the confusion, error, and division which Satan and his cohorts never cease to spread throughout the world and within the Church.

You will also act in the person of Christ the High Priest to sanctify the faithful, most especially through the Sacraments of Penance and the Holy Eucharist. By your manner of celebrating the sacred rites, make it clear that it is Christ, Priest and Victim, Who acts through the Sacraments. Each day, may you discover anew your priestly identity through the offering of the Eucharistic Sacrifice. Thus, you, in Christ, will be both priest and victim for the salvation of countless souls.

Finally, you will act in the person of Christ Who guides us in the way of what is good, of what conforms to the truth we teach and to the beauty we celebrate in the Sacraments. May you guide the souls in your care to conform their lives to the truth of the Faith and the beauty of the Sacred Liturgy, and to avoid the perennial evil of the Modernist heresy which, on the contrary, conforms the faith and worship to the world. Pray daily that you, as true spiritual fathers, may have the wisdom and courage to guide the Church, in communion with your Prior General, the Bishops of the dioceses in which you will serve, and the Roman Pontiff.

Your priestly heart offered totally to the Royal Heart of Jesus is, at the same time, offered totally to those for whom you have been called by Christ to give your lives. Do not doubt or fear that you can love the faithful as Christ loves them. Let the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus purify your hearts of all distractions and disordered affections so that you can be a pure oblation for your brothers and sisters. Seeing the purity and beauty of the Heart of Jesus in your heart, they will more readily, with the help of the Virgin Mary, gives their hearts to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.

The purity of your oblation of self is eloquently expressed in your response to Christ’s call to priestly celibacy, by which you make your identity with Him complete. Let the grace of Christ penetrate your entire being, so that you may never in any way diminish or betray the pledge of love of Christ and of His holy Church which you have made in promising to live in perpetual continence for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven. Remember, too, that your priestly celibacy is a source of inspiration and strength for all the faithful in living perfectly the virtue of chastity, according to their state in life.

Entrust your priestly life and ministry to the intercession of Mary Immaculate, Virgin Mother of Christ the Eternal High Priest and Mother of Priests, to Saint Joseph, and to Saints Benedict of Nursia, Thomas Aquinas and Francis de Sales, your patrons as secular canons. Our Lady and all your holy patrons will be at your side, helping you by their prayers to be a true shepherd after the Royal Heart of Jesus Christ Eternal High Priest.

May you so carry out your priestly ministry, that, when you have reached the end of your earthly pilgrimage, Christ will welcome you, His good and faithful co-workers, together with the souls in your priestly care, into the everlasting joy and peace of the Kingdom of Heaven. By His Redemptive Incarnation, which we contemplate in the Visitation of His Virgin Mother, He has won for us the grace of Eternal Life of which we now have the foretaste in His Eucharistic Sacrifice.

Raymond Leo Cardinal BURKE

[1] Sg 2, 10-13.

[2] Lk 1, 41-43.

[3] “The Hail Mary,” Handbook of Prayers (London: The Incorporated Catholic Truth Society, 2013), p. 41.                                                                                                                        

[4] Mt 4:19.