The Priest: A Man Captivated by Christ’s Love | Fifth Sunday of Easter | Sunday Reflection

Next Tuesday, May 20, 2025, we celebrate the 1700^th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325). This anniversary reminds us that Jesus Christ is true God, “consubstantial with the Father.” The divinity of Christ, however, is revealed to us through His humanity. That’s why we seek His face in the gospels. His humanity shows us the face of God, what God is like, how He acts, who He is. All graces and blessings come to us through the sacred humanity of Christ.

God uses our humanity to reveal Himself and reach out to others. In a particular way, He uses the humanity of the priest, something we recall in these joyful days of priestly ordinations and First Masses for the Archdiocese of Boston, followed by ordinations in Rochester, Worcester, and Providence.

Christ uses the priest’s humanity because the priest is an “ambassador for Christ” who appeals through him: “Be reconciled to God!” (2 Cor 5:19-20). Christ uses the converted and purified humanity of the priest to draw people to Himself. In this way, the priest becomes a sacrament of the Lord’s ministerial presence and action. Captivated by the love of God, the priest becomes a minister of divine love for others.

Father Anthony Luli described the priest in this way: “A priest is first and foremost one who has known God’s love. A priest lives to love, to love Christ and love everyone in Him, in every situation in life, even when it means giving one’s life for Him.” Father Luli did not write these words from the experience of a comfortable life. He was an Albanian priest who spent 42 years—most of his priestly life—in Communist prisons and work camps, experiencing torture and dreadful conditions. He was 80 years of age when he was finally released. Yet he carried no bitterness. After his release, he encountered one of his prison guards in the street. He went up and embraced him. The priest lays down his life because he has been seized first by the love of God. We need priests captivated by Christ’s love to carry Christ to others.

The priest is the man who carries Christ to others. When the famous writer Franz Kafka lay dying in a sanitorium in 1924, he was very moved by what happened at the bed next to him. The man dying there had no family, no visitors, and the medical staff had given up on him. He was left to die alone. Kafka observed that only a priest came to him, spoke with him, spent time with him, and gave him the last sacraments and Holy Viaticum, and then remained with him until he died. Captivated by Christ’s love, that priest went where no one else would—to bring Christ to those most in need.

The priest knows the only life incompatible with death, that is, the love of the crucified and risen Jesus. This is the love that is better than life; the love that is stronger than death. This is what the priest brings. He carries Christ to all who need him. “Wherever man goes,” Caryll Houselander wrote, “the priest follows him with the Living Bread.” She observed that “There is no one who is not followed by the man who carries Christ in his hands.” The priest is the man who carries Christ in his hands. Captivated by the love of Christ, he brings Him to others.

The priest strives to live a life that would make no sense at all if God did not exist, if the kingdom of God were not at hand, if the love of Christ were not the most important thing. Captivated by the love of Christ, the priest lives his life from that pure source, most of all from his renewed strength before the Living Bread that is the Eucharistic Jesus. This is the love commanded in today’s gospel scene from the Last Supper which was the first Mass and the first ordination of the New Covenant.

May God bless and keep the class of 2025! Our prayer for them is for the deep joy of a life given to Christ, a life lived in imitation of Him, configured to Him, consecrated entirely to Him and the service of His holy people. Captivated by the love of Christ, may they carry Him to countless others. Ad multos annos!