It’s the one Mass of the year which embraces everyone in the archdiocese – including those who will die and those yet to be born – and when priests solemnly renew their promises to serve.
Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP welcomed bishops, clergy, religious, seminarians and hundreds of representatives of parishes and schools at the Chrism Mass at St Mary’s Cathedral today.
In his homily he reminded priests and deacons of their responsibility to be teachers and preachers about God.
“The Lord has given you disciples’ tongues, that you might speak to the weary … speak glad tidings to the down-hearted, healing words to the broken-hearted, liberating words to the heavy-hearted”.
He told them to never offer less than the whole of Catholic truth, “never tickling ears or compromising the faith for popularity sake, but making your words a foretaste of that beatific vision of divine truth to which we are called in heaven”.
“And if in everything you must love truthfully, you must also communicate lovingly, never treating your sheep harshly, but always making your pastoral life an embrace from our affectionate God, an experience of that beatific union with divine love to which we are also called eternally,” he said.
He asked the rest of the congregation for prayers for their priests that they will “lead you to Christ who is the source of salvation”, and for himself, “that I may be faithful to the Apostolic Office and day by day may be more conformed to the person of Christ”.
After renewal of vows by the clergy Archbishop Fisher blessed the three oils intended for use in every parish through the liturgical year: the Oil of the Sick, the Oil of Catechumens, for baptisms, and the Oil for Holy Chrism, for those to be ordained.