Dear Aidan, this is good.
In recent years, our diocese has been blessed with laity and clergy from elsewhere. What an enrichment this has been! But it’s good to know there is still local whisky being produced. Good to have an Elgin loon sitting here on the threshold of being ordained as a priest of our fellowship. Encouraging that a Matheson will be added to the Macdonalds and McWilliams and McGregors and the others who have gone before. I was thinking of this on a recent train journey to Inverness. On arriving at the station, I noticed a plaque headed by the name of Sir Alexander Matheson; walking down to the River I passed Matheson’s Bathrooms, and becoming superstitious by this stage, I said to the Lord, ‘Well, if there’s a third…’ And there in the waiting room of the station on my way back was a 1904 photograph of a Lady So-and-So Matheson.
So, Aidan, you have lineage.
Ordination, it hardly needs saying, is being taken up into something longer and larger than us, including the genius of a place and a history. There is a depth to this diocese, with its Pictish, Gaelic, Viking roots, its Middle Ages, its penal times, its 19th c. resurfacing, its ongoing ebbs and flows. It has a galaxy of saints. It has its ancient places, some like Pluscarden living again. It has Scalan. It is fine territory for pilgrimages. There is something of the Communion of Saints hidden and active in all of this. Something of it already sustains you, Aidan, I feel. I’m sure it always will. In this diocese, we can spend a lot of time on certain roads. It’s good to remember that we’re not the first apostle to use them.
And so on into the Church of our own time. It is the one same Church, the Body of Christ, the People of God, guided by the Holy Spirit and nourished by Scripture and Tradition, weak and strong at once, the one Church of faithful, clergy and religious in her current form or iteration. Here she is, post-conciliar; appropriately penitent; striving to be rooted humbly in the person of Christ, growingly synodal in her way of doing things and missionary, evangelising in outlook. It’s as a living, gifted, contributing part, Aidan, that you will be praying, singing, preaching, celebrating the sacraments, exercising your pastoral ministry: in communion with Leo our Pope and your local bishop, your fellow-priests, and deacons, with lay faithful and religious, Always, in St Therese’s phrase, be in the heart of the Church. Let us always allow our own emphases, our own wish-list, our own vision of contemporary needs – well and good – to be enlarged by the Church. May any setbacks and disappointments along the way not make us bitter!
Sometimes, the liturgy uses the phrase “raised to the priesthood”. Perhaps it might mislead. You are not being ‘raised’ – to a pedestal, I hope, or to celebrity status or into splendid isolation. I’d rather say, you’re being taken up. Taken away, first, from the possibility of marriage and a family life of your own, taken away from the ordinary pursuit of a career, taken away from independence. Taken away, and taken out of yourself by the people you will serve, the missions you’ll receive and the obligations you will assume; sometimes, like Peter, taken where you would rather not go. And taken up – indeed, into the ministerial priesthood, into this Spirit-given way of sharing in the role of Christ, Shepherd and Pastor. Taken up into divine purposes. Thank you for your ‘yes’ to this. Thank you to all who have accompanied and supported your ‘yes’. There are so many cheering you on.
And what a fine feast on which to be ordained! It is the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart, which is anyway the Day of Priestly Sanctification, and this year part of the Jubilee of Priests. Pope Leo was busy ordaining priests this morning. You can rightly feel connected with all that. The readings of Year C today focus on the Shepherd. What could be better? You have breakfasted with the Lord by the Lake of Galilee, and he has asked you, as he asked Peter, if you love him. And you have said yes, and he has said, Feed my sheep. In that first reading from Ezekiel, there is a whole pastoral path outlined. There are images of seeking and rescue, of a passage from darkness to light, from scatteredness to gatheredness, from exile to home, from hunger to nourishment, from woundedness to healing, from wandering to rest. This is the Lord’s pastoral plan, which he is always about. And you are freely, willingly consenting to be taken up into it. A shepherd must need good eyes. He has to seek, to look out and around. A priest brings a special way of seeing into the world. The Holy Spirit opens the eyes of his heart. He doesn’t see people as objects to like or dislike, as agreeable or disagreeable, useful or useless. Of course he sees, but he also sees beyond, age and beauty or lack of it, beyond health or ethnicity, beyond achievements or wealth, virtue or the lack of it. He sees those on his path with the eyes of Christ, as precious per se, made in the image and likeness of God and called to transformation in Christ. He recognises the person, the “I” God longs to address as “you”. He discerns the nimbus or mandorla of God’s loving purpose that clothes every person, even when unacknowledged. These are the eyes of the heart, of the Good Shepherd, eyes linked to the mercy of the Father. How the world needs these eyes! How each of us needs to feel these Christ-eyes on us! And how the Holy Spirit, “deep within” the priest, forms those eyes in him, keeps them open in regular prayer and turns them where he wills!
Dear Aidan, it’s into this way of seeing you are being taken up today. It’s in his heart that yours is being transplanted. It’s further into his Paschal Mystery you are passing. And it’s through the loving celebration of the Eucharist that you will find strength for the journey.
May the joy of the shepherd and his friends in today’s Gospel be yours in the parishes you’ll serve, this Jubilee year and beyond!
In his homily this morning, Pope Leo had this to say to today’s ordinands: “Remember that the Church, in the two thousand years of her history, has had – and today continues to have – wonderful examples of priestly holiness. From the earliest communities on, the Church has raised up priests who have been martyrs, tireless apostles, missionaries, and champions of charity. Cherish this treasure: learn their stories, study their lives and work, imitate their virtues, be inspired by their zeal, and invoke their intercession often…!” Dear Aidan, may you be among them!
St Mary’s Cathedral Aberdeen, 27 June 2025, Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
