Holy Mass with Priestly Ordinations

On Saturday, May 31, 2025, Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Holy Father celebrated Holy Mass in St. Peter's Basilica. In his homily, the Pope spoke to the ordinands, warning them against “self-referentiality,” which “extinguishes the fire of the missionary spirit,” by regarding the grace of Holy Orders as a gift elevating them above those they are called to serve.

Dear brothers and sisters!

Today is a day of great joy for the Church and for each of you, ordinands, together with your family, friends and companions on the journey during your 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 that we now share is directly proportional to the bonds that exist and will grow between you ordinands and the people from which you come, of which you remain a part and to which 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 supreme and eternal priest.

We are the people of God. The  Second Vatican Council has made this awareness more vivid, almost anticipating a time in which belonging would become weaker and the sense of God more rarefied. You are testimony to the fact that God has not tired of gathering his children, even though they are different, and of forming them into a dynamic unity. It is not a question of an impetuous action, but of that light breeze that gave hope to the prophet Elijah in the hour of discouragement (see 1 Kings 19:12). The joy of God is not noisy, but it truly changes history and brings us closer to one another. The mystery of the Visitation, which the Church contemplates on the last day of May, is an icon of this. From the meeting 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 to interpret what is also happening among us. Jesus, first of all, in the Gospel does not appear to us crushed by imminent 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 hands of the Father the bonds he has built here below. We are part of it! The Gospel, in fact, has come to us through bonds that the world can wear down, but not destroy.

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

The Church is constitutively extroverted, as are the life, passion, death and resurrection of Jesus. You will make his words your own in every Eucharist: it is "for you and for all". No one has ever seen God. He turned to us, he came out of himself. The Son became the exegesis, the living story. And he gave us the power to become children of God. Do not seek, do not seek any other power!

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

In his greeting to the elders of the community of Ephesus, of which we heard some fragments in the first reading, Paul transmits to them the secret of every mission: "The Holy Spirit has made you guardians" ( Acts 20:28). Not masters, but guardians. The mission is Jesus's. He is Risen, therefore he is alive and precedes us. None of us is called to replace him. The day of the Ascension teaches us about his invisible presence. He trusts us, he makes room for us; he even went so far as to say: "It is to your advantage that I go away" ( Jn 16:7). We Bishops too, dear ordinands, by involving you in the mission today, make room for you. And you make room for the faithful and for every creature, to whom the Risen One is close and in whom he loves to visit us and amaze us. The people of God are more numerous than we see. Let us not define their boundaries.

From Saint Paul, from his moving farewell speech, I would like to underline a second word. It, in reality, precedes all the others. He can say: "You know how I have behaved toward you all this time" ( Acts 20:18). Let us keep this expression engraved in our hearts and minds! "You know how I have behaved": the transparency of life. Known lives, legible lives, credible lives! We are within the people of God, to be able to stand before them, with a credible testimony.

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 humanity's rejection, he forgives us and sends us. Let us not forget this! Today too he breathes on us (cf. Jn 20:22) and makes us ministers of hope. "So that we no longer look at anyone as men do" ( 2 Cor 5:16): everything that in our eyes seems broken and lost now appears to us as a sign of reconciliation.

"The love of Christ in fact possesses us," dear brothers and sisters! It is a possession that liberates and enables us not to possess anyone. To liberate, not to possess. We belong to God: there is no greater wealth to appreciate and share. It is the only wealth that, when shared, multiplies. Together we want to bring it into the world that God loved so much that he gave his only Son (cf. Jn 3:16).

Thus, the life given by these brothers, who will soon be ordained priests, is full of meaning. We thank them and we thank God who called them to serve a people who are entirely priestly. Together, in fact, we unite heaven and earth. In Mary, Mother of the Church, this common priesthood shines, which raises the humble, binds the generations, and makes us call ourselves blessed (see Luke 1:48.52). May she, Our Lady of Trust and Mother of Hope, intercede for us.
 

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