40th Anniversary of Ordination of Fr Alexander
It was lovely to celebrate with Dom Alexander his Ruby Jubilee of Priesthood. He was ordained on this day with Fr James Hood at Downside. Fr Alexander has been with us for nearly two years, while our Fr Nicholas is Prior Administrator of Downside. The exchange has cemented the relationship between our two communities. In addition, Abbot Richard Yeo is Novice Master at our foundation in Peru. It is delightful having Dom Alexander with us.
The only sadness is that Mass continues to be held behind closed doors with just the community 'the household' present, with all the appropriate measures of distancing that we have embraced. So sadly Fr Alexander could not celebrate with friends and parishioners. We hope we can be together soon as things start to open up.
Do keep Dom Alexander in your prayers, along with Dom James of Downside. Ad multos annos!
Below these photos is Fr Alexander's homily at Mass.
Forty years ago on this date, 28th June, which is the feast day of St Irenaeus, I was ordained priest in Downside Abbey. On this Feast Day of SS Peter and Paul, the day after my ordination, by kind permission of a holy abbot, Dom John Roberts of Downside, I celebrated my first "solo" Mass in the abbey Church. It was a great occasion. Being a Sunday that year as well, the whole School was present, some 600 boys in those days, plus parents and visitors from the Ordination the day before. Today, by kindness of another distinguished abbot, and in a very changed world, I am privileged to celebrate this Ruby Jubilee Mass here in Belmont Abbey. I am offering this Mass of Thanksgiving for both Communities.
My sermon to the boys and visitors 40 years ago was a young man's sermon. I spoke about SS Peter and Paul as being enthusiastic apostles for Christ. They were full of energy and zeal to preach the gospel to the whole world. They are the founding apostles of the Church. I have a great personal devotion to both of them. My baptismal name is Peter and I chose to be received into the Church on the feast day of the Conversion of St Paul. St Irenaeus got left out of the picture. But on our ordination card Fr James and I put a quotation from the great Augustine Baker, from Abergavenny just up the road from here, which said: "To pray is not to talk or think but love." Everything comes together in this life once we put our hands into the hands of God and let Him lead us, sometimes, as Jesus said to Peter, to places we never thought of going!
Today, I would like to bring St Irenaeus into the picture a bit more and to link him with these great saints Peter and Paul. St Irenaeus famously said that "the glory of God is man fully alive". And living as he did in the 2nd century of the life of the Church, Irenaeus knew St Polycarp who had known and was a friend of St John. John's Gospel records facets of the life of St Peter which are unique to John. He records Peter's impetuosity: "you shall never wash my feet!". John records Peter's weeping after he had denied Christ three times before His Passion. And John also records that lovely dialogue between Jesus and Peter when Jesus commissions Peter to pastor the flock of the Church. Do you love me? He asks Peter three times, thereby undoing the three-fold denial. And Peter gives that heartfelt and humble cry: "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you" -Feed my sheep. I have put Peter's words on my card for this anniversary of my ordination. Those words, and Jesus' commission to feed the sheep sum up for me the essence of the priesthood. It is love for |Christ which takes the priest into the heart of the Trinity, the great community of Love from which all else springs. And all that a priest does for others is simply spreading abroad God's love for all men so that all may be fully alive and so glorify God. Perfect love casts out fear says St John, and he also reminds us that we cannot claim to love |God, whom we have never seen, if we fail to love the brother or sister right in front of our eyes.
St Paul also writes about our love for God in his letters, most notably in 1 Corinthians 13. When Paul says "Love is patient and kind, it is not jealous or boastful, it is not arrogant or rude, love bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things and lasts for ever," he is writing about Jesus and about the heart of Christian life. He would endorse John's words: In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and called our love in return through Christ.
That is, for me, the heart of priesthood. And it is to St Irenaeus that we owe so much as one of the great founding fathers of the Church because it was he who realised so early on the importance of having a settled canon of Holy Scripture to set out these beautiful sayings which I have been quoting here and preserve them for all time; and it was Irenaeus who saw what a precious gift Jesus has given to His Church in the Petrine Ministry which is to strengthen us all in our Christian lives. That ministry has endured for 2000 years, and we have been greatly privileged to have lived under such great popes in our lifetimes. The greatest title of the popes was coined for them by St Gregory the Great. They are the servant of the servants of God. That too is the essence of priesthood. And in a monastic community the priest-monk is the servant of all the brethren. That is a high calling. It demands sacrifice. But the rewards are indescribable. Thanks be to God.
