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Dear Friends in Christ,

We have gathered here to offer this Mass, to return to God, the abundant love that He has given us in Christ the Lord. And our offering is made very special by the action of admitting into candidacy these two men, who have decided to seek the priesthood - to submit themselves to the process of discernment and education, whereby the Church will ask God to make clear, the truth of their vocation, and the depth of their offering.

We do believe that anyone who pursues ordination must have within them the pre-existing call of God to serve Him in the priesthood. But we also know that God expects a response on the part of human beings, and not just subjugation to His word. God conceived human beings in love - His own Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, was conceived because of His love for us - and in the Gospel today, we hear our Lord enunciate this underlying principle of all the dealings between God and man, when He quotes the words of the Father as spoken to Hosea the Prophet: “ For it is love that I desire, and not sacrifice .”

The sacrifice that God did desire and ordain, was the life of Jesus Christ, and our Lord gave His life that we might be freed from sin. But the result of His sacrifice, of His death for us, is to teach us the essential worth of His every word and action - for is we understand that someone has given their life for our sake, we want to know why - we want to know how such an act could have been motivated - we want to understand from where comes the great courage to lay down one's life for one's fellow man.

From the Lord we learn that the all His goodness came from His fundamental commitment to love - love of His Father who is God, and love of mankind. To love God above all else, and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. When Christ the High Priest, after consecrating the bread and wine at the Last Supper, spoke to the Apostles and said, "Do this in memory of me," it is true that He created the priesthood, and that the first and always the most important act of the priest is to offer the Eucharist. But in doing this, in commemorating the actions of Christ at the Last Supper, we are also invited into a sharing not only of that action, but of all the actions of our Lord's life. Implicit in the offering of His Body and Blood, is also the offering of all the love He had for mankind, and that He had shown during in His life, and all the love that He guaranteed would survive His earthly presence, by the sacraments we share, and by the good works we do. And the priest has been appointed by Christ to lead the Faithful in realizing this fullness of His love.

We are to offer the people the Body and Blood of Christ - but there is more, much more: we are also to lead the unwashed into the salvation that Baptism makes possible - we are to guide the young into their first confession of sin, and their first reception of Holy Communion - we are to witness and to support the desires of our young men and women, to cling to one another, and to create families - we are to help, to guide, to love our people, from the day of their birth until the day they go to meet the Lord in eternity - and we are to be, to the utmost degree possible, unfailing models of Christ-like conduct, in all our behavior towards other people. All of these actions are implied when our Lord says to His first priests, and to every priest that will follow, "Do this in memory of me."

Tonight, we urge these men to take the recollection of these words, and their implications, as their primary personal directive during the coming years - to hold these words in their minds as they move through the waters of priestly formation - to let them burn into their hearts as they gradually realize how much the man who would be priest must ever become, less of himself, and more of a living memory of the life, the actions and the person of Jesus Christ, the Eternal High Priest.

And we - the rest of the Church - promise that we will pray for them, as they seek to respond to God's call. They have agreed to pursue this candidacy for the sake of the Church - for our sake; and we now agree to help them in all ways possible, as they pursue this goal. We acknowledge, as God already knows, that the sacrifice they offer comes not from fear, but from love - and this is the first sign of a vocation's authenticity. May the coming years, of searching and finding, bring them finally to the day of ordination - and may God keep us all well, to celebrate that joyful day, when it comes.

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