Catholic Review Online: Chrism Mass message is food for the soul

The Chrism Mass was held Monday, March 17th in our Archdiocese at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in Baltimore. Today, His Excellency Archbishop Edwin O'Brien in his column, "Thoughts on Our Church" writes a beautiful column for his brother priests and for all of us.

The last several years, as each very special Chrism Mass approaches, I have found food for the soul in a 2002 Chrism Mass homily offered by Baltimore’s proud native son Bishop Victor Galeone of St. Augustine. I thought I should share it with you and am grateful to my good friend, the Bishop of St. Augustine, for permission to do so:

"I’d like you to come back with me to the spring of 1974 – back to the town of Andahuaylas, high in the Andes Mountains. At the time, I was serving as a missionary in Peru. This particular Sunday afternoon, I was visiting our sick parishioners in the town hospital. In the men’s ward, I came across Oswaldo – a Lutheran minister who was visiting from Lima. He had taken ill a few days before. At this point, I’d like to quote directly from a journal that I sometimes keep:

“On the night table next to Oswaldo’s bed was a pocket-size New Testament. ‘May I?’ I asked, as I picked it up. Thumbing through the small volume, I noticed that he had underlined some pertinent verses, but only a very few. It was then that I saw it. Verse 12 of Matthew 19 was very deliberately underlined: ‘… and there are eunuchs who have made themselves so for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven. Let the one who can accept this teaching, do so.’

“Setting the small volume down, I inquire, ‘Oswaldo, may I ask how old you are?’ – ‘Twenty-four,’ he replies. – ‘Are you married?’ – ‘No, I’m not.’ – I start to smile, knowingly – ‘Why are you smiling?’ he asks me. – ‘I think that I’ve just discovered a beautiful secret.’ – Now he’s the one that smiles, and his innocent, manly eyes look away, as he says: ‘Yes, Victor, for as long as the Lord gives me the grace to do so. And I pray that it will be to my dying breath.’ ”

In my journal, I concluded with this observation: “Lord, what a sad contrast! So many of my brother priests becoming bitter over this ‘burden, forced on them by an outdated, medieval Church’ – and here we have a separated brother, unassumingly and joyfully accepting this beautiful gift from your hands.’

There is much more here. Read this beautiful meditation!