Bishop Glen John Provost, D.D., M.A
Bishop of Lake Charles
Priesthood Ordination
Saturday, May 27, 2023
Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception
Lake Charles, Louisiana
“Do not neglect the gift you have, which was conferred on you through the prophetic word with the imposition of hands of the presbyterate.” I Timothy 4:14
In a few moments, I will impose hands upon your head and ordain you to the priesthood of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Finding its origins in Apostolic times, St. Paul speaks of imposing hands twice in his letters to St. Timothy, once mentioning his own imposition of hands and again that of the presbyterate. Along with the invocation of the Holy Spirit, a gift is given, one foreseen by God and revealed through His Son to His Church. St. Paul will speak of this saying, “I remind you to stir into flame the gift of God that you have through the imposition of my hands” (II Timothy 1:6). And again, St. Paul will mention the gift of priesthood “conferred on [Timothy] through the prophetic word with the imposition of hands of the presbyterate” (I Timothy 4:14).
Hands play an important role in the life of a priest. You will pour water over the head of a newly baptized. You will raise your hand in pardon to the penitent, anoint the head and hands of the sick and dying, and, most especially, raise the Sacred Host before the eyes of the faithful and distribute the food of eternal life in the Eucharist.
While the hands of the bishop will ordain in the Sacrament of Holy Orders, it is your hands that he will anoint with Sacred Chrism “that you may sanctify the Christian people and offer sacrifice to God.” Into those same hands which you placed in mine promising “respect and obedience,” I will place the blessed paten and chalice holding host and wine mixed with a measure of water. I will say, “Receive the oblation of the holy people, to be offered to God.”
Behind every priestly hand gesture is the hand of God. Just as surely as God directed the institution of the priesthood by Moses to Aaron and his sons (cf. Exodus 29:1-9), so too God has ordained that the new eternal priesthood of His Son, Jesus Christ, be shared by those who continue the efficacious work of His one and only Sacrifice. The words of Psalm 119 take a new meaning: “Your hands made me and fashioned me” (v. 73). And for what, we might ask? “’Like Melchizedek you are a priest forever.’ At your right hand is the Lord” (Psalm 110:4-5a).
You are the work of God’s hands. He has fashioned you for a purpose. And what is that purpose? To be his faithful and vigilant servant, for that is what priesthood is at the very core of its sacrificial essence. “[B]e like servants who await their master’s return from a wedding, ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks” (Luke 12:36). “You also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come” (Luke 12:40). What marvelous words to speak to a priest!
Ask any priest. The priesthood is a great adventure, a silent journey, to what earthly end we know not. But of this we can be certain, the adventure is for the discoverer who is in love with the eternal end of his pursuit. This expectation is what keeps the servant working until his master’s return. The servant knows just enough about the master to know that he will see him once again. In his anticipation, his love for the master grows. He knows that the master “will put him in charge of all his property” (Luke 12:44), because he found the servant waiting—not in tedium or boredom or in hope of a reward, but in love, a love that translates into doing what the master expects of him.
Love—what an overblown and misused word in our world today! What can restore the word’s equilibrium? Perhaps hands can help us understand. What we learn from the hands of our parents pass onto to us as we grow older. Hands hold and caress. They also reprimand and admonish. They heal and support. They also measure, cook, and construct. They write and paint and play musical instruments. They do countless things, and when we turn to prayer, they trace our body with the symbol of our redemption.
These gestures of childhood and young adulthood prepare us to grasp God’s hands. The hands that directed the Creation of the world are the same hands that work through those of Moses to establish the Levitical priesthood. To what purpose? So that we will understand better the work of His hands. So that in the fullness of time, God’s Son can hand His apostles bread made flesh and wine made blood to be an everlasting memorial of His love.
Someone recently asked me what I thought was the biggest problem facing the Church today. Where do I begin to answer that question? After having reflected for a while, a thought came to me at prayer. The biggest challenge to the Church today is the loss of a sense of the sacred. We find an increasing desacralization both within and outside the Church. The contemporary, secular world speaks for itself. When an ancient and prominently Catholic country recorded almost twice as many deaths as births last year (cf. Italy, 2022, 713,499 deaths to 392,598 births, WSJ, May 13, 2023), then we know that the culture of death has taken hold. This loss of a sense of sacred goes beyond the symptoms manifested in our families, schools, governments, and churches. The Church must witness to what it was called to be—an evangelizer of the Gospel of Christ, a witness to eternal truths, a harbinger of a better way of life. This vocation is not accomplished by mimicking the secular world. And we do not capture a sense of the sacred by discarding a witness, which is precisely what celibacy is.
The priesthood is not an institution as the world understands institutions. The priesthood is a sacrament, an efficacious sign, the work of God’s hands. And every dimension of the priesthood, including celibacy, is integral to the created object fashioned by the Divine artisan. We are the work of God’s hands, all of us, but the priest in a unique way.
The priest brings Christ to others, intimately so with his hands. He holds the hand of the dying, reaches out to the needy, embraces the sorrowful, and knocks on the door of the lonely. Anyone, any Christian, can do this, but when the priest does so, he is Christ sacramentally to others. For this reason, among many, I think celibacy is important, not only because the Lord Himself was celibate but also because celibacy tells the Beloved that you are all His. Celibacy cannot be reduced to a discipline. To speak in that way about celibacy is crude and a dismissive distortion. Celibacy is a rich sign that communicates a powerful message. The priest belongs to someone else. And why this intimate identification? Because hands were placed on his head.
Allow me to conclude with this priestly prayer of St. Paul VI. “Make us worthy, Lord, to serve our brothers and sisters throughout the world who live and die in poverty and hunger. Give them, through our hands, this day their daily bread, and by our understanding love, give peace and joy.”