This is my body, given up for you
This is the homily for the ordination to the priesthood of Sacred Hearts Brother Ajit Baliar Singh in the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace on May 21, the 150th anniversary of the priestly ordination of St. Damien DeVeuster, also a priest of the Sacred Hearts, in the same place.
Isaiah 61:1-3; 2 Corinthians 4:1-2,5-7; John 21:15-17
One month shy of his 25th ordination anniversary, Father Damien was fatally consumed by the deadly disease of leprosy. Mother Marianne Cope, Joseph Dutton and others prepared his body to lie in state in his beloved St. Philomena Church. As his flock filed by to view his body for the last time and to bless him with their prayers, it was almost as if he were crying out to them, “This is my body, which was given up for you.”
One hundred fifty years ago today, in this very same Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace, young Damien DeVeuster, who had recently arrived in Hawaii from Belgium, lay on the floor as the saints were asked to file by him one by one in that litany ever ancient and ever new and to bless him with their prayers. His heart was bursting with the same prayer that had guided their lives as he said to the Lord, “This is my body, which is given up for you.” He offered himself to feed the lambs of the Lamb of God, and little did he know that he himself would be consumed.
Today this young man, Brother Ajit Baliar Singh, will lie prostrate on the floor as the saints of heaven and we below who struggle to be saints bless him with our prayers. He may know where his next assignment will be, but he has no idea where this adventure of the priesthood will ultimately take him. He cannot know whether his road will be smooth or very rough, whether he will lead a life filled with smiles or with suffering, yet with all the faith and love in his heart he says to Christ and to his beloved people, “This is my body, which is given up for you.”
Like Simon Peter, Brother Ajit has already encountered the risen Jesus, eating and drinking in his company. Jesus has already asked him, “Do you love me?”, and he has already answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Jesus now commissions him to feed his lambs and tend his sheep. In this ordination he will be configured to Christ in a special way, not just receiving a license to do priestly ministry, but becoming himself a sacrament of Christ the Priest. What he will soon discover, however, is that the sheep he is sent to serve do not eat grass or hay, but they are fed and nourished by a person, by the living Bread come down from heaven.
Brother Ajit will make great efforts to enter each day into an ever growing communion with the One Good Shepherd in his prayers, in his poverty, chastity and obedience, and in his consuming the Word of God. He will offer himself to be consumed by the people he serves, to be the food that nourishes them, because it is no longer he who lives but Christ who lives in him.
Every day from here forward he will have the privilege of standing before the Lord’s beloved flock, himself a fragile earthen vessel, and consecrating them in the Word. He who is still, like us, burdened with the gravity of sin, will dare to fly up to heaven itself to call upon the living bread to come down from heaven, so that the risen Christ may gaze into the eyes of each person who encounters Him, and ask, “Do you love me?” As a priest of the One High Priest and Shepherd of our Souls, he will urge them to nourish each other by bringing glad tidings to the lowly, healing the brokenhearted, proclaiming liberty to captives, comforting those who mourn, and proclaiming the favor of the Lord in this very time.
He will ask them to do nothing, however, that he himself is not willing to do, as he gives his body for their service and pours out his life-blood for their nourishment. He is able to do this because Jesus first did it for him, and for all of us; because Jesus was lifted up on the tree of life and said those amazing words, “This is my body, which is given up for you.”
Throughout Father Ajit’s life, whether at moments as joyful as this, or at moments more painful, confusing or exhausting, Jesus will ask him again and yet again, “Do you love me?” We pray that he will always have the courage to answer, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” And then, we pray, that like Damien, he will offer himself to be consumed by the Lord’s beloved flock; and that he will always be in deep communion with Jesus whose words and deeds he will repeat thousands of times, making them not only the words of Jesus, but his own with Jesus, “This is my body, which is given up for you.”