Pope Leo XIV Homily to Newly Ordained Priests: May 31, 2025

Pope Leo XIV gave this homily today at the occasion of his ordination of priests.

Pope Leo XIV Homily to Newly Ordained

Dear brothers and sisters!

Today is a day of great joy for the Church and for each and every one of you, ordaining presbyters, together with your family, friends and fellow pilgrims during the years of formation. As the Rite of Ordination highlights in several passages, the relationship between what we celebrate today and the people of God is fundamental. The depth, breadth and even duration of the divine joy we now share is directly proportional to the bonds that exist and will grow between you ordinands and the people from whom you come, of whom you remain a part and to whom you are sent. I will dwell on this aspect, always keeping in mind that the identity of the priest depends on union with Christ the high and eternal priest.

We are the people of God. The Second Vatican Council made this awareness more vivid, almost anticipating a time when memberships would become weaker and the sense of God more rarefied. You bear witness to the fact that God has not grown weary of gathering his children together, however diverse, and constituting them into a dynamic unity. This is not impetuous, but that gentle breeze that restored hope to the prophet Elijah in the hour of discouragement (cf. 1 Kings 19:12). God’s joy is not noisy, but it truly changes history and brings us closer to one another. An icon of this is the mystery of the Visitation, which the Church contemplates on the last day of May. From the encounter between the Virgin Mary and her cousin Elizabeth we see the Magnificat spring forth, the song of a people visited by grace.

The Readings just proclaimed help us interpret what is also happening among us. Jesus, first of all, does not appear to us in the Gospel to be crushed by impending death, nor by disappointment over broken or unfinished bonds. The Holy Spirit, on the contrary, intensifies those threatened bonds. In prayer they become stronger than death. Instead of thinking about his own personal destiny, Jesus places in the Father’s hands the bonds he has built down here. We are part of it! For the Gospel has come to us through bonds that the world can wear away, but not destroy.

Dear ordinands, conceive then of yourselves in Jesus’ way! To be of God — servants of God, people of God — binds us to the earth: not to an ideal world, but to the real world. Like Jesus, they are flesh and blood people whom the Father places in your path. To them you consecrate yourselves, without separating from them, without isolating yourselves, without making the gift received a kind of privilege. Pope Francis has warned us many times against this, because self-referentiality extinguishes the fire of the missionary spirit.

The Church is constitutively extroverted, as extroverted are the life, passion, death and resurrection of Jesus. You make his words your own in every Eucharist: he is “for you and for all.” God no one has ever seen him. He has turned to us, He has come out of Himself. The Son became the exegesis of it, the living story. And he gave us the power to become children of God. Do not look for, do not look for more power!

May the gesture of the laying on of hands, by which Jesus received children and healed the sick, renew in you the liberating power of his messianic ministry. In the Acts of the Apostles that gesture, which we will shortly repeat, is transmission of the creative Spirit. Thus, the Kingdom of God now brings into communion your personal freedoms, willing to go out of themselves, grafting your intelligences and young strengths into the Jubilee mission that Jesus transmitted to his Church.

In his greeting to the elders of the community of Ephesus, from which we heard a few fragments in the First Reading, Paul conveys to them the secret of all mission: “The Holy Spirit has constituted you as stewards” (Acts 20:28). Not masters, but keepers. The mission is Jesus’. He is Risen, therefore He is alive and goes before us. None of us is called to replace him. Ascension Day educates us in his invisible presence. He trusts us, He makes room for us; He even went so far as to say, “It is good for you that I go away” (Jn. 16:7). We bishops, dear ordinands, by involving you in the mission today also make room for you. And you make room for the faithful and for every creature, in whom the Risen One is close and in whom he loves to visit and amaze us. God’s people are more numerous than what we see. Let us not define its boundaries.

Of St. Paul, of that moving farewell address of his, I would like to emphasize a second word. It, in fact, precedes all the others. He can say, “You know how I have dealt with you all this time” (Acts 20:18). Let us keep in our hearts and minds, well carved, this expression! “You know how I have behaved”: the transparency of life. Lives known, lives readable, lives credible! We stand within God’s people, so that we can stand before them, with a credible witness.

Together, then, we will rebuild the credibility of a wounded Church, sent to a wounded humanity, within a wounded creation. We are not yet perfect, but it is necessary to be credible.

The Risen Jesus shows us his wounds, and although they are a sign of rejection by humanity, he forgives us and sends us. Let us not forget Him! He also blows on us today (cf. Jn. 20:22) and makes us ministers of hope. “So that we no longer look at anyone in the human way” (2 Cor. 5:16): everything that appears broken and lost in our eyes now appears to us in the sign of reconciliation.

“For the love of Christ possesses us,” dear brothers and sisters! It is a possession that liberates and empowers us to possess no one. Liberating, not possessing. We are God’s: there is no greater wealth to appreciate and share. It is the only wealth that, shared, multiplies. We want to bring it together to the world that God so loved that he gave his only Son (cf. Jn. 3:16).

Thus, the life given by these brothers, who will soon be ordained presbyters, is full of meaning. We thank them and we thank God who has called them to the service of an all-priestly people. Together, indeed, we unite heaven and earth. In Mary, Mother of the Church, shines this common priesthood that lifts up the lowly, binds the generations, and makes us call blessed (cf. Lk 1:48, 52). May she, Our Lady of Trust and Mother of Hope, intercede for us.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

On the friar, you can listen to our homilies (based on the readings of the day) and reflections. You can also ask us to pray for you or to pray for others. You can subscribe to our website to be informed whenever we publish an update. You can subscribe to our podcasts on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

About Author