Our People

Homily for the ‘First Mass’ of Father Andrew Keswick

Votive Mass of Jesus Christ the High Priest
Blessed Mary MacKillop Parish, Keilor Downs

By Most Rev. Anthony Fisher OP
Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney
15/7/2007

I remember attending a revue in 2001 at Corpus Christi Seminary where a dark boy barely out of school was the star. He stole the show as he impersonated his lecturers and formators, and copied and bettered some of our greatest comedians. The woman sitting beside me asked if I knew what parish he was going to, as that was where she wanted to go to Mass! So my apologies to those who came hoping to hear Andrew preach today: I can only promise many years of homiletic comedy to come…

"See, my servant will prosper," says God to us today, "he shall be lifted up, exalted, rise to great heights… Crowds will be astonished at him; kings stand speechless before him; for they shall see something never told and witness something never heard before." Thus opens the Servant Song in the Book of the Prophet Isaiah (52:13-53:12). A strange dirge, its meaning lay hidden for hundreds of years. But in the fullness of time God the Father sang to us the eternal love song that is his Son. And this revealed the hymn to be the anthem of Jesus Christ, High Priest and Suffering Servant. Only by encountering Him do we know who it was in Isaiah’s song who won the adulation of the crowds, of kings, of God; who was truly exalted, transfigured, entering triumphantly into Jerusalem; who was raised to great heights, from the very Realm of the Dead to the Right Hand of the Father.

Yet there is irony in this exaltation. God so loved the world he gave his only Son, gave him into the hands of sinful men, gave him over to the Cross. That was indeed his ‘hour’, his ‘moment of glory’. That was the moment that makes sense of the rest of Isaiah’s song and shows that it cannot be about any of the kings or prophets or other Old Testament potentates. We know whose story it is, for we saw him in the Garden and before Pilate: “By force and by law he was taken,” Isaiah predicted, “would anyone plead his cause?” We saw him on the hill of Calvary: “He was pierced through… he was raised up… appalling to look at… despised and rejected, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief”. We saw him in the tomb, as Isaiah had prophesied: “Torn from the land of the living, struck down in death, they buried him like the wicked, yet in a tomb for the rich.” This, we know very well, is the plaintive song of Good Friday.

Not only did he suffer, he suffered patiently: “Like a lamb to the slaughter-house, harshly dealt with, he never opened his mouth.” He suffered innocently: “Though he had done no wrong, and there was no perjury on his lips.” He suffered vicariously: “Ours were the sufferings he bore, ours the sorrows he carried… he was pierced through for our faults, crushed for our sins,” Isaiah reminds us. And he suffered salvifically, for our redemption: “We all like sheep had gone astray… He offers his life in atonement, that his heirs might have eternal life... By his sufferings shall my servant justify many.” So Jesus is truly lifted up, exalted, raised to great heights, and he draws us with him – but only after he has been cast down, degraded, plunged into the depths of human misery and abandonment. And that is the mystery, not just of Christ our High Priest, but of the Catholic priesthood.

‘Joining the priesthood’: it sounds so easy. It must have seemed an adventure for the teenaged Andrew like so many before him, right back to the Twelve. It must have seemed a great drama. Yet the Suffering Servant sings in a very different drama: the greatest that ever has or ever could be performed. Through a mystery that could only be wrought by Christ himself, Father Andrew is about to be the actor. Appropriately enough, perhaps, as Andrew loves acting. But after many years’ prayer, study and formation, he knows that his limbs and face and voice and movements are no longer just his own. No merely human skill, not even that of a Jim Carrey, a Rowan Atkinson, a Lawrence Olivier, an Andrew Keswick, can perform this action. Human beings alone could never play in this Sacred Drama, could never “Do this as a memorial of Me”. Andrew, for all his gifts, could never do this, were he not now overshadowed by a power which has so possessed him, that words and deeds he does not yet believe are in him are now possible. He will speak and act in persona Christi, in the very person of Christ the Priest.

Andrew is not just a fine actor, now with a new part to play, bigger than himself. He is also a good student – good enough once to have received a rare ‘A’ from Professor Ramsay, good enough to be sent to Rome for higher studies. So he has been enrolled at Corpus Christi Seminary and CTC, at Propaganda Fidei and the Urbanianum, at the North American College and the Gregorian University, and most recently at Santa Croce. For several years, then, he has been learning, eating, playing and soaking up the culture, going to holy parties, fraternising with Popes, cardinals and seminarians and no doubt entertaining them all. It has been a marvellous opportunity for him living so close by the bones of the Apostles and witnessing life at the centre of the Church.

Yet it is very important that Fr Andrew returns soon for good. Exactly one year from today will be the Opening Mass for the World Youth Day in Sydney. That will begin a week of catechesis and prayer, liturgy and celebration with half a million young people from around the world. Many will return to our parishes on fire with faith, wanting to learn more, to pray better, to lead and to serve. We will need all hands on deck for them. We have surrendered Andrew joyfully for a time, but we need him back: partly, because we love him dearly, but principally because there are seven sacraments Christ wishes to dispense and he needs such hands to confect them.

Happily in Rome he has specialised in sacramental theology. In our Second Reading (Heb 10:12-23) we heard that the piercing of the Suffering Servant, the sacrifice of Calvary, is “the one single offering” of Christ to save us all. But how, the earliest Christians asked, how are we to be joined to that all-sufficing offering? How are we to share in that ‘sanctifying’, ‘perfecting’, ‘eternal-life-giving’ sacrifice? Our “bodies are washed with pure water” the Letter answers the Hebrews, referring of course to the Sacrament of Baptism. “We enter the sanctuary through his Body”, the apostle continues, telling of the Sacrament of the Eucharist. “Our souls are purified,” he concludes, hinting at the Sacrament of Confession. And if we are to be baptised and absolved and communicated, we need priests to continue Christ’s saving action upon our bodies, souls and spirits, his washing and feeding and forgiving. We need a voice for Christ’s words: ‘I baptize you’, ‘I absolve you’, ‘This is my Body’.

Fr Andrew has, I know, long worried about his own worthiness to say these words, and rightly so. Candidates for the priesthood approach that day with excitement and trepidation. The Sacrament of Holy Orders is properly received on our knees. Indeed during the Litany of the Saints in yesterday’s beautiful ceremony in St Patrick’s Cathedral, the Deacon Andrew lay cruciform upon the ground, identifying himself wholly with Christ, the Suffering Servant, our Crucified Lord. For if this young priest is truly to prosper, be lifted up, exalted, he must allow God the Father to sing through him his eternal lament for his only Son and his eternal love song for humanity. If this young man is now to be called ‘Father’ by those twice or three times his age, to be vested as a priest and ascend to the sanctuary of God, if he is to lead humanity in its greatest act of worship and lead the flock in place of the Good Shepherd, he must be ready also to be cast down, degraded, plunged into the depths with his Lord. In himself, he must suffer, patiently and sometimes innocently, like his Saviour, as trials come his way. And he must suffer vicariously, with and for others, out of com-passio, compassion, fellow-suffering with the People of God. Before that calling he properly shudders.

Yet if the creation, redemption and ultimate destiny of the world, if the Incarnation, Passion and Resurrection of the Christ, if the sacraments, teachings and priesthood of the Church, all strike us with awe, so also should they fill us with delight. If humility requires that Andrew know the limitations he brings to the priesthood, it demands that he appreciate the gifts he brings also: the love and nurture of his family and friends, most especially of the proudest mother in the world toady, Althea who taught him by her own example not only about love but about service of the Church; the ethnic background and Melbourne upbringing; the studies and travels; his affectionate, fun-loving, infectiously happy personality. And Andrew brings with him various bits of each one here who has influenced and loved and prayed for him.

As the Song of the Suffering Servant put it: "like a young tree, he grew up before our very eyes." Like a young tree, certainly, for in Andrew there is an contagious, bubbling youthfulness. His mother tells me that at the age f two he used to go along the line of people in Church or in the supermarket saying to complete strangers ‘The Body of Christ… The Body of Christ… The Body of Christ.” So it seems that from childhood he has had this calling. We know he is now grown up, the sapling has become a tree, the boy become ‘Father’. Yet we hope he maintains something of that eternal youthfulness at the heart of the Church. Above all he brings his generosity and goodness. Andrew is a truly, deeply good man and it is that goodness has inspired me these past several years. There are many other qualities I could list but some, because of my rôle as his one-time spiritual director I must not, and others, because believe it or not even Andrew can occasionally be embarrassed, I will not.

Yet for all his qualities and his generosity in offering those gifts back to God, Fr Andrew knows he is now to play in a drama not entirely of his own making. Yesterday he was offered by his family, friends, school, Archdiocese and all the Church, for transformation into a new person, a sacred person. The People of God invited him to share in the most crucial aspects of their lives: their births, marriages and deaths, their sins and aspirations, their moments of touching the sacred and the times they feel God’s absence and their own desolation. God and his People have now commissioned Andrew to preach God’s saving truth, to lead God’s chosen people, to mediate God’s saving grace. He will need God’s help, and so must always turn to God in prayer. He will the People of God’s help, and so you must offer him again and again for service, and support him yourselves in every way. For from today Christ will speak in him and through him. From today Christ will make himself present to us in the most intimate way through the hands of this new priest. From today our brave, generous, young actor humbly disappears from the scene, as all eyes focus on Christ’s Flesh and Blood descending from heaven. Today Andrew begins the task for which he was made, a task awesome and wonderful. We pray for you, our dear son, our dear brother, and now dear Father. Pray for us at the altar of God and draw us closer to that same altar.